


Sins That Cry To Heaven

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (I saw that tag and I love it to pieces), A Truly Spectacular Amount of Alcohol, Allusions to Book Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Sexual Situations, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Not Oblivious (Good Omens), Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Disassociation, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling (Good Omens), Fandom-typical disregard for the gender binary, Forbidden Love, Fuck Or Die, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Genitalia Swapping, God - Freeform, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Heavy Angst, Historical References, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making an Effort (Good Omens), Multi, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Rape Recovery, Repression, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Whump, Wing Grooming, Worldbuilding, cw: Holocaust mention, cw: Slavery mention, forced to fuck, heavenly bureaucracy, mentions of Aziraphale/Others, mentions of Crowley/Others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2020-09-05 18:48:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 64,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's the end of summer in the year 1990. In the next universe over, Crowley and Aziraphale are pretty busy with the Apocalypse not happening. In this one, they have to deal with a much more personal threat: a team of four angels have found them out, and they know the perfect punishment to fit their crime.





	1. The Sin of Sodom

In another life, the summer of 1990 would have been a fairly busy time for Aziraphale and Crowley, and the preceding eleven years wouldn’t exactly have been slow either: Armageddon was meant to be kicking off, after all. In this one, Satan had developed a bit of a headache on what would have otherwise been the fateful night, and wouldn’t actually get around to spawning for another not-quite-twenty years yet.   
  
It was still a busy time, even without the ticking clock. For one thing, as it was only the first year of the decade it was functionally the same as the decade preceding it: Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister, it often seemed like one in six of Aziraphale’s neighbors were dying of AIDS, communist governments were failing across the board, and there was entirely too much cocaine. Crowley had taken a trip to Lithuania to do a blessing for him that winter, and had come back with a basket full of miraculously bakery-fresh zagareliai. And now Aziraphale had just returned from repaying him the favor by doing a minor temptation in Peru- laughably minor, considering what the humans were coming up to do to themselves all on their own at the time. Still, he’d gotten a rather nice bottle of pisco while he was there, and he planned to share it with Crowley as they debriefed and worked out what he should put in his report.   
  
That was pretty much exactly what he expected from that day: to return home, spend a few hours assuring himself that the bookshop was still there and undefiled, get something to eat delivered, call Crowley and enjoy a relaxing evening with some agreeable company. He wasn’t worried about anything in particular. There had been a few problems in the neighborhood with rude graffiti and suchlike, though of course none of those hoodlums could so much as look at his shop for too long without developing a sudden migraine and needing to lie down for a while, and perhaps rethink their life. The temptation didn’t weigh heavily on his conscience. There were no meetings with Heaven scheduled until the annual Host-wide get-together on September 29th. There was no indication that anything was amiss at all, until he actually entered his shop and found three archangels in his kitchen.   
  
Lowercase-a archangels, it must be said. He outranked them. It was probably the only reason he didn’t panic outright when he saw them.   
  
“Ah. Hello?” he tried, deciding to treat them as though they were the customers who tried to paw at his rare misprints. “Is there something I can help you with?”  
  
None of the angels answered him. But there was a cough, from the sitting room. The archangels watched him, stony faced. Bereft of anything better to do, he set down the bottle of pisco and made his way deeper into the shop.   
  
He stopped, three steps into the sitting room. The Principality Innahon sat in his favorite chair, spear in hand. Worse still, at his feet was Crowley, bound, gagged, and bleeding sluggishly from a wound in his temple.   
  
_Oh,_ Aziraphale thought, his feet sticking to the floor. _It’s happened._  
  
There was a deep dark pit in his mind, where he stuffed down every emotion that was anywhere near too much, to be looked at most likely never. If he’d been the sort of person to try and catalog such emotions before banishing them, there would have been a sizable collection labeled _Things I Would Have Nightmares About, If I Slept_, with a sizable subcollection labeled _Being Found Out_.   
  
Predictably, the reality was worse than anything Aziraphale’s subconscious could have conjured up.   
  
“Principality Aziraphale,” Innahon said, smiling. It was a genuine smile of delight, which only grew brighter when he struck Crowley with the butt of his spear, and Aziraphale jerked as though he had been struck as well. “You know me.”  
  
“I do,” Aziraphale replied. "Principality Innahon."  
  
He heard the archangels file in behind him, but didn’t dare turn around to look.   
  
Four. There were four of them. This was a tribunal. _His_ tribunal. And Crowley…  
  
If there was a would-be collection of things in that mental pit of his bigger than _Things I Would Have Nightmares About, If I Slept_, it was the collection that would be labeled _Reasons I Am In Love With The Demon Crowley._ That one even had a tendency to pop out at him when he least expected it, when it got too quiet and lonely, and/or when he could least stand to weather it, such as now.   
  
_Oh, please. Please, I didn’t mean to love him, he doesn’t even know. Whatever happens to me, I’ll accept it as Your will, just spare him this.  
  
Please. He won’t even know why._  
  
“These are my attendants, the archangels Amnoniel, Kedesha, and Paltithael,” Innahon continued.   
  
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Aziraphale managed. Crowley was frightfully pale and still at Innahon’s feet. He seemed just barely able to stay conscious.   
  
“We have been watching you, Aziraphale, and we have grown concerned. This demon is tempting you from your path, and we cannot allow things to continue as they are.” He threw his spear to Aziraphale, who caught it on reflex. “Kill him.”  
  
“What.” That was what he meant to say, at least. It didn’t quite come out past the sudden tightness in his throat.   
  
“Kill him,” Innahon repeated, advancing on him. “Remove his temptation from both yourself and the world. Regain your place among the righteous.”  
  
Aziraphale’s ears were ringing. “No.”  
  
“Kill him,” Innahon was speaking very softly, now. He had no need to speak any louder. He was very much intruding on Aziraphale’s personal space. “I will not ask you again.”  
  
“No,” Aziraphale said. He tried to take a step back and met the unyielding hands of the archangels. “No.” He let the spear drop from his hands and onto the floor with a clatter. “I can’t.”  
  
“You won’t,” Innahon accused. Or tried to accuse. He looked far too happy to do much accusing.  
  
“I _can’t_,” Aziraphale repeated.  
  
Behind Innahon, Crowley made a protesting noise, suddenly looking a lot more aware than he previously had. Innahon grabbed Aziraphale by his shirtfront, and shoved him towards the demon. Aziraphale went willingly. It put his body between Crowley and the angels who clearly meant him no end of harm.   
  
_Please, let my death be enough. Not him too, please, God, not him._  
  
“You’d defy the will of Heaven for this demon?” Innahon asked.   
  
“I suppose I must,” Aziraphale answered. He waited. It was a renunciation, or at least as close to one as he could honestly make. His Grace should be drained away, his connection to the Almighty severed. There should be pain, and maybe even a swirling vortex to pull him down into Hell. If they were lucky, it would take Crowley too. If they were really lucky, Aziraphale might survive long enough to Fall down alongside him.   
  
“You aren’t Falling,” Innahon observed, after a moment’s expectant silence.   
  
“I don’t seem to be,” Aziraphale confirmed. “I’m not sure why.”  
  
Behind him, Crowley made another, even more desperate protesting noise.  
  
“Perhaps you haven’t yet given into the demon’s temptation,” Innahon suggested.   
  
“I’ve just told you that I’ll defy the will of Heaven for him,” Aziraphale replied, as calmly as he could. “I don’t know what else there is.”  
  
One of the archangels snickered a bit, before cutting herself off. Then, after a moment, Innahon let out of great booming laugh, and all of the archangels followed suit.   
  
Aziraphale was no stranger to being laughed at by angels, though he generally had some idea what caused the laughter. He knew to wait it out, and respond with a smile of his own. “Care to let me in on what the joke is?”  
  
“You,” Innahon told him, smiling broadly. He clearly thought he was the first person to think of that line.   
  
Aziraphale continued to smile, and to wait him out.   
  
“You, with your well-known weakness for sins of the flesh,” Innahon continued, once it became obvious that Aziraphale wasn’t giving him the reaction he craved. “You would ask what else there is?”  
  
“I’m not sure what you’re expecting here,” Aziraphale said, clinging desperately to bewilderment. “Should I order some take-away? Crack open a bottle of wine?” He’d been planning on doing that anyway, with Crowley no less. They’d been doing it together for almost two thousand years, ever since those oysters in Rome. “I’ve been doing that. It hasn’t caused me to Fall.”  
  
Innahon stepped back into his personal space, and laid a hand on his chest, his fingers curling around the top of his waistcoat. “Not that kind of sin.”  
  
_Ah,_ Aziraphale thought, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. _Not very many ways to interpret that, are there?_  
  
He felt very cold. He wondered if this was how it started, Falling. But wasn’t it supposed to burn? He’d never asked Crowley. It seemed like such a painful thing to discuss, and the demon had never offered any details, beyond the description of having sauntered vaguely downwards.   
  
He waited, quite sure that at any moment Innahon was going to start undoing the buttons on his waistcoat, if not tear it open. Instead, he shoved Aziraphale back again, towards Crowley, who was very nearly growling at them through his gag. Aziraphale almost tripped on him, and had to swallow to urge to apologize.   
  
“You’ve left yourself with two choices, Principality Aziraphale,” Innahon said, moving across the room to settle back into his armchair. Aziraphale turned to keep facing him, unwilling to have him at his back. One lazy flick of Innahon’s wrist later, and his spear was in his hand once more. “You may rid the world of the temptation of the demon Crowley. Or you may give in to his temptation, and Fall.”  
  
He gestured towards Crowley, who was still trying to spit something out at them. Two of the archangels went to either side of the room, while the third remained at Aziraphale’s back.   
  
“What?” Aziraphale said. “I- I- I- I don’t understand. What-”  
  
Innahon sighed, and tapped Crowley with the shaft of his spear. “This demon has been tempting you into every manner of sin. Looking at you now, I see pride in your unorthodox appearance, greed in your accumulation of material possessions, wrath towards the will of Heaven, sloth in the performance of your duties, envy towards those of us who remain true to our purpose, and gluttony for fine food and drink when you need not consume at all. There’s only one thing that remains: lust, for the demon’s body.”  
  
_Not him, not him, please, not him. Just cast me down, please, I can’t hurt him, please..._  
  
“I can’t hurt him,” Aziraphale said. He was shaking: his shoulders, his hands, his voice. “I can’t, I-”  
  
“Then you’ll end him?” Innahon asked, holding out his spear once more.   
  
“No!”  
  
Crowley tried to lash out at him, legs twisting together in a kind of kick. Innahon was unfazed, and brought his spear down on Crowley again with a crack.   
  
“Don’t touch him!” Aziraphale snapped.   
  
“The longer you draw this out, the more difficult this will be,” Innahon said.   
  
Aziraphale swallowed the denials he still wanted to make.   
  
_It’s happening. You’ve been waiting for it to happen, to be found out, for centuries. You’ve been waiting to Fall even longer. Well, here it is. It’s happening. This is the end for you._  
  
This was all so much worse than he ever could have imagined.   
  
Aziraphale took a step forward, and then collapsed on his knees. He reached for Crowley, who let out another desperate noise as Aziraphale wrangled him, as gently as possible, into a sitting position. Even with the gag, it was very clear to him that the demon was trying to say _no_.   
  
Something deep within Aziraphale cracked, but he couldn’t dwell on it, not now.  
  
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he whispered. He couldn’t look Crowley in the eyes. It was bad enough that he had to look at the black blood dripping onto the cuff of his sleeve as he tried to cradle the demon’s head. “I’m so, so terribly sorry, but I can’t let you die.”


	2. The Blood of Abel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. This is pretty graphic, just a heads-up. And, additionally, there’s a great deal of swapping around of genitals, which I know can be dysphoria triggering for people. And also a bit of body horror at the end. I'm going to put a bare-bones summary in the end notes, for anyone who feels like skipping.

Crowley had made an Effort some time ago, and seemingly never stopped. It had been impossible not to notice, with how tight his trousers had become these past several years. Aziraphale had noticed, in fashions incidental, semi-accidental, and drunken, and then promptly thrown each notice into his mental pit of _Not Thinking About It_.  
  
Those buried memories reared their heads as he looked down at the slight bulge at the front of Crowley’s jeans. He bit his tongue against further apologies. He could apologize the entire time, and it would never be enough, not for the desperate way Crowley tried to throw himself back against one of his climate-controlled cabinets as Aziraphale tried to undo his fly.  
  
He didn’t, as a general rule, run around with an Effort made. When he did make an Effort, it was generally for purpose, and in this respect now was no different than usual. He made himself a vagina, which was different than usual, if for no other reason than it didn’t really ‘match’ the rest of his corporation in the eyes of the humans he went to bed with. But he didn’t want to hurt Crowley, or more realistically, he wanted to hurt Crowley as little as possible, and that seemed easier to manage if he didn’t have to equipment to penetrate him.  
  
But there was nothing that could make this better, he reminded himself as Crowley let out a long, distressed whimper that sounded far too much like begging. There was no way this could be anything other than one of the worst sorts of violation.  
  
Still. Damage mitigation. He could do that, physically at least. He pulled Crowley’s cock out, swallowed back the bile that threatened to claw its way up his throat, and wrapped his fingers around his shaft. Crowley made a terrible wounded noise. Aziraphale paused, giving himself a moment to breathe deeply and blink back tears.  
  
Then he lunged forwards, just barely managing to get his hand between the cabinet and Crowley’s head as he threw it back with a loud, agonized howl. His cock was suddenly quite hard in Aziraphale’s other hand.  
  
“You didn’t need to do that!” Aziraphale hissed, turning just enough to see Innahon in the periphery of his vision.  
  
Innahon shrugged. “You were taking too long. If you’ve chosen to Fall, then I see no reason to drag out this crude display.”  
  
_Then why ask for it at all?_ Aziraphale wanted to shout. _Why not just strike me down? You outnumber me! You all have weapons! You all intend to use them! Why must you make a monster out of me first?_ He didn’t dare to suggest it. After all, he might be of extremely limited use, but Crowley was defenseless, bound as he was with rosaries and tefillin, a bit of prayer rug stuffed in his mouth as a gag. If he died, while Crowley was still trapped like this…  
  
_Please let there be a vortex, straight to Hell,_ Aziraphale prayed, well aware that this was perhaps the most inappropriate thing anyone had ever asked God for. _Please, let it take him too. I know You cannot think much of him, as a demon, but surely no one deserves to die defenseless after being violated by their best friend._  
  
He pulled his trousers and underthings down to his knees with a single movement, unwilling to disrobe more than he had to in order to do the deed. He straddled Crowley’s thighs as best he could, and guided his cock within him.  
  
It was uncomfortable. This really wasn’t his preferred Effort at all, and as a result he was unused to the sensations it provided, and he didn’t quite know how to use it proficiently. Crowley’s Effort wasn’t particularly small, either. Crowley let out a whimper as Aziraphale sank down on his cock, and it wasn’t a happy sound.  
  
“Well,” demanded one of the archangels. “Why aren’t you fucking him?”  
  
“Give me a moment,” Aziraphale said tersely. “I have to adjust.”  
  
He’d half hoped that this would be enough. That the forced contact would send him Falling without having to do any more. But as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened, he resigned himself to needing to move.  
  
Probably this would end after he came. Which meant that it would be for the best if Aziraphale could come as quickly as possible. Which was a pity, because he was not sure he’d ever been less aroused in his entire immortal life.  
  
Still. The angels were clearly expecting something, so he moved, lifting his hips a little and bringing them back down. It was going to be pretty much impossible to get a good angle like this, but switching positions would require getting them into a state of further undress and he wasn’t going to do that. Especially not to Crowley, who needed his clothing to insulate him from the holy objects binding him. There was nothing between him and the prayer rug, and he could already see how it chafed at his lips and the skin around them.  
  
Crowley’s eyes were screwed tightly shut, his whole face pinched with pain. Aziraphale averted his eyes, and, inevitably, looked down to where their bodies were conjoined. He shut his eyes, and swallowed thickly. It would do no one any good at all if he were to start weeping uncontrollably.  
  
He braced one hand on the cabinet behind Crowley’s head, used the other to rub at his clitoris. He moved his hips again, and again, trying to set up a rhythm.  
  
It wasn’t enough, but he could already tell that nothing was going to be. There was no mistaking the miserable tension in Crowley’s body beneath his. There was no disguising the small movements of the angels behind them as they watched intently for the first sign of his Fall. There was no making this anything other than what it was.  
  
But he had control over his own corporation, at least. He made himself wet, to better move up and down Crowley’s cock. He nudged himself, as best he could, closer and closer, until finally it was upon him: lackluster and sickening, but unmistakably an orgasm.  
  
He waited. Nothing happened.  
  
“Damn,” he swore, his voice cracking.  
  
“What’s the problem, Aziraphale?” Innahon asked.  
  
“I came,” Aziraphale grit out. “I had an orgasm. That should have done it! That should have been enough! I don’t understand why I’m not Fallen!”  
  
He heard Innahon get up, and on pure instinct he spread himself out, trying to shelter the demon as much as he could. Crowley grunted as the movement jostled him. Innahon didn’t do anything, though: he just peered down at the two of them, like they were some kind of exotic exhibit he’d been roped into viewing.  
  
“I suppose,” Innahon said slowly. “That traditionally the demon would experience some pleasure in this as well.”  
  
Aziraphale felt his entire being crumple. Beneath him, Crowley let out a string of angry snarls, muffled and distorted behind the gag in his mouth.  
  
“Unless you’ve changed your mind..?” Innahon suggested.  
  
Like there could ever be any coming back from this. Like killing Crowley on top of raping him would be in any way _redemptive_.  
  
“No. I’ll do it.” Aziraphale heard his own voice coming as though from far away. “Just give me a moment.”  
  
He lifted his hips, and brought them back down again, doing his best to find a rhythm. It would be easier to know what was working for Crowley, insofar as anything here could work for Crowley. It would help him make this quick. It would also be easier not to know, because he’d spent too much time, over the years, imagining what would make Crowley come apart, and he’d never wished to find out which of them were true in such a grotesque fashion.  
  
Those imaginings had also been quickly banished to his mental pit, but they surfaced now as he made a mockery of his secret desire to try to spoil Crowley as thoroughly as Crowley spoiled him.  
  
It took too long. Crowley didn’t seem to nudge his body towards orgasm as Aziraphale had. He probably couldn’t, between the head injury- inconvenient even when you were an occult being- and the holy objects binding him. Or maybe he just didn’t want to spend any energy on making this easy for Aziraphale. He certainly wouldn’t begrudge the demon for being stubborn in the face of all this.  
  
Finally, though, he felt Crowley spill within him. He stilled instantly, grateful for this to be over, for it to be done, for him to be able to _stop_.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. He wanted to bow his back a bit more, to lean down and rest his forehead against Crowley’s but he had no right to offer comfort here.  
  
He waited, as Crowley softened within him. He waited, as he felt come leak out of him. He waited, and _nothing was happening_.  
  
“No,” he gasped, panic clawing at his chest. It wasn’t working, _it hadn’t worked_ and they were either going to make him do it all over again or they were going to kill them both outright and “No no nonononono…”  
  
One of the archangels lifted him bodily from Crowley, and he lashed out.  
  
He hadn’t considered attacking the angels when he first realized what they’d come here to do, because any instinct he might have had towards attacking other angels had been smothered and smothered again, most recently in the last decade. If he had, he would have dismissed it out of hand: he was outnumbered four to one, they were armed and he was not, and they had a hostage. Those were not tenable odds. Right now he didn’t have the head for odds, or indeed, considerations of any kind. He just struck out on instinct.  
  
Should he ever look back on the fight after the fact, he would be forced to conclude that, while still doomed from the start, it had gone better than he could have anticipated, especially considering that he’d literally had his trousers down around his knees when he started it. He reared back, cracking his head against the archangel who’d taken hold of him. The archangel didn’t quite let go, but he did loosen his grip, enough for Aziraphale to pull himself free and punch him directly in the face.  
  
This accomplished two things, in terms of the fight progressing: it made Aziraphale acutely aware that he needed to pull his trousers up, _now_, and it shook the other angels out of their surprise. He managed his trousers, one handed, hopping out of the way of the archangel trying to rush him. He managed to grab hold of her arm, and spin with enough force to send her flying into the third when he let go. One of their spears clattered the floor and spun out of their reach as they crashed into each other and one of the freestanding bookcases. His trousers were up now, or at least up enough for fighting unimpeded. The first archangel had gotten his spear out from where it had been slung across his back, and he lunged for Aziraphale. Aziraphale managed to dodge and grabbed the spear by its shaft. It was impossible to get enough leverage to pull it from the man’s grip, however. While it wasn’t as cramped as the shop proper, his sitting room was still _his_, and therefore in a state of pleasant clutterment. Less pleasant now, that the fighting was scattering his belongings around on the floor, but still cluttered. A spear wasn’t a close quarters weapon. Aziraphale wished for his sword- or _a_ sword, even, or why didn’t he even keep some kind of antique showpiece above the mantle? A sword in the right hands could win out over spears easily, no matter the arena.  
  
But, of course, he had given his sword away.  
  
Innahon rushed for him- and further away from Crowley, _good_\- and Aziraphale waited until the last possible second before snapping his wings out. They caught both Innahon and the archangel who had been grappling with him for the spear in the faces. Aziraphale launched himself a foot or two in the air, spear finally in hand.  
  
He wished he could break it in half, which would have shrunk the amount of space he needed to use the pointed end properly and given him something to parry with besides. But the moment the weapon was in his hands, he knew that it could not be broken by any holy means. He was just going to have to make the best of it.  
  
He stabbed down, catching one of the archangels in her newly-manifested wings. She screamed in pain, and fell back. She was the only one who did. The other two archangels leaped for him, as Innahon took flight. His spear caught on the fabric of Aziraphale’s jacket, and Aziraphale brought the butt of his stolen spear against Innahon’s face, breaking his nose. Then the combined weight of the archangels clinging to his legs brought him down to Earth.  
  
Before his feet touched the floor, Aziraphale drew his wings back in, throwing the archangels off balance and giving him slightly more room to maneuver. He managed to cut someone’s leg with the head of the spear, and gave someone else a good whack on the throat with the butt. Then Innahon grabbed him from behind, and pulled as the archangels grasped at his spear.  
  
He lost the weapon. He brought his wings out again. Innahon lost his grip, but one of the archangels managed to catch him in the ribs with the shaft of their spear. He struck out, elbows and fists and a knee that would have been very well placed had the angel in question been making the correct Effort, and then he went down under the combined efforts of a punch to the face, a wing to the side, and a spear hitting him behind the knee.  
  
There was a lot of shouting and a lot of limbs pressing down on him, and he tried and failed to headbutt an archangel again. Then it was over. From start to finish, the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes.

Aziraphale was laid out flat on his back, or at least as flat as he could be, given the wings splayed out beneath him, the round paperweight digging into his lower back, and the shards of something ceramic trying to cut into the back on his right thigh. Innahon had a foot planted on his chest. Two of the archangels were kneeling, one on each of his arms. The third was off to the side.  
  
“Paltithael?” Innahon asked. He touched his nose, and it was straight and unbloodied in an instant.  
  
“It’s broken,” spat the archangel not currently on top of him. She must have been the one he stabbed in the wing. “It’s broken, that demon-fucking-” Incoherent with rage, she took up her spear again and brought it down on his left wing.  
  
Aziraphale’s vision whited out for a moment as his ulna broke under the onslaught. So did pretty much every other sense he possessed, save for his pain receptors.  
  
“- attacking a subordinate angel? How low can you sink, really?” Innahon was saying when Aziraphale’s awareness returned.  
  
_I’ve just raped my best friend,_ Aziraphale thought miserably. _And that’s what strikes you as low?_  
  
“You’ve clearly never had a performance review with Sandalphon,” he said, and then laughed with no small amount of hysteria because everything hurt and that’s what came out of his mouth.  
  
The laughter choked the shout he wanted to make as Innahon slashed the pointed end of his spear down the inside of his right arm, slicing through fabric, skin, and no small amounts of fat and muscle. His blood spilled out onto the floor.  
  
“Golden blood, white wings,” Innahon observed. “You haven’t Fallen.”  
  
“I don’t know why,” Aziraphale told him. “I don’t- I really don’t know why.” The angels seemed to have forgotten Crowley, and he didn’t want to remind them of his existence.  
  
Innahon removed his foot from Aziraphale’s chest. He knelt down between his legs, the ceramic shards disappearing before they could come close to encountering his knee. Aziraphale’s trousers were still pulled up, though they weren’t fastened. Innahon tugged them down easily.  
  
Aziraphale bit down on the inside of his cheek, and let his head fall back against the floor. He stared blankly ahead at the ceiling, and wondered why he was so certain that Innahon could rape him without suffering any ill effects while he was, if anything, even more certain that he should have Fallen the moment he touched Crowley’s cock without his permission.  
  
He tried to stuff the question into his mental pit, but his pit didn’t seem to be accepting any more errant thoughts or emotions right now. It stayed burning in his head as time went funny, stretching out into eternities as Innahon poked and prodded between his legs, never precisely penetrating, just exploring, examining. Aziraphale bit down harder, until blood began to fill his mouth.  
  
Crowley growled something, and Aziraphale tried to struggle as every angelic eye in the room turned on the demon. It was no use. Innahon simply clamped down on his hips, the two archangels on his arms held fast, and Paltithael came over to place a foot on his chest.  
  
“Is this your preferred Effort?” Innahon asked, once Aziraphale had stopped trying to move.  
  
“It shouldn’t make a difference,” Aziraphale rasped.  
  
“I think in this case it must,” Innahon said gravely. “You have chosen to Fall, Principality Aziraphale. You have chosen to yield to temptation. There is no room for half-measures. You must yield as you’ve imagined yourself yielding.”  
  
_For that to happen, you’d have to fuck off for the better part of a century first,_ Aziraphale thought. _You’d have to give me time to set it up properly, with dinner dates and walking down the street holding hands and kissing on the park bench. And then, once we were in bed, it would take decades to work through every act I’ve thought about doing to him, or letting him do to me._  
  
Mercifully, he had the presence of mind to say only “Fuck off.”  
  
“No, I don’t believe I will,” Innahon murmured.  
  
To his horror, Aziraphale felt the Effort between his legs start to tingle, to try and remake itself as Innahon reached in with spectral fingers, and tried to manipulate something he never should have been able to access.  
  
“No,” Aziraphale hissed between clenched teeth. “No!”  
  
He focused on keeping the Effort in the shape it was currently in, or better yet, disappear it entirely. It was a battle of wills, and Aziraphale had always been a bit too stubborn for his own good. But he was also wounded- he’d also been wounded- on just about every level imaginable. Though it took at least half an hour, Innahon succeeded in calling forth his more usual cock, as Aziraphale lay on the floor with tears streaming down his face.  
  
“There,” Innahon said, nodded towards his attendants. They got up off of him. The male-presenting archangel reached out and began to heal Paltithael’s wing. “Now you can have him properly.”  
  
Even if he hadn’t known what was coming, Aziraphale wouldn’t have been able to summon the will to get up off the floor. Crowley was still making angry noises. He had been for some time, Aziraphale was distantly aware.  
  
“No,” he whispered.  
  
“You’ve chosen this, Principality Aziraphale,” Innahon reminded him, his tone a parody of understanding and gentleness. “You’ve chosen to Fall. Now do it.”  
  
Aziraphale remained on the floor.  
  
“Let me help you, then,” Innahon said.  
  
Aziraphale yelped as the other Principality used the same manipulation he’d used on Crowley’s cock before, to make it instantaneously hard.  
  
“Do you need to me prepare the demon for you as well?” Innahon asked as Aziraphale’s head spun with the sudden lack of blood.  
  
“No,” Aziraphale said softly, raising a trembling hand in supplication so Innahon could tell this was a surrender, not another protest. “No, I’ll do it.”  
  
He propped himself up on his elbows, hissing in pain as the movement jostled his broken wing. He scrambled towards Crowley, nearly tripping over his trousers, which were still pulled down. The archangels sniggered at that. Aziraphale, already flushed bright with shame, burned a little more to hear it.  
  
He summoned the lubrication he kept in the water closet, noting as he did that there was a ward around his bookshop. He wouldn’t be able to miracle anything or anyone from outside of it inside, and vice-versa. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d known that must be the case, but the conscious awareness of it was better than nothing, he supposed.  
  
_Please, this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’m not sure I could do worse,_ Aziraphale begged silently. _Please, just make me Fall. Please, just let this be over. Please, just let that be enough to save his life._  
  
But he didn’t Fall, so he must still have worse to do.  
  
Crowley had stopped making noises as Aziraphale approached him. He made another one as Aziraphale reached for him, four interconnected grunts that might have been his name.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said again, fully aware that his apology was beyond useless.  
  
He turned Crowley over, and pulled down his jeans as best he could over the bindings. It was enough for him to be able to finger him open. He coated his index finger with lube, and pressed inside as gently as he could.  
  
Because he was trying not to think about it, Aziraphale sought out Crowley’s prostate on instinct. Crowley whimpered when he managed to press down on it, and Aziraphale pulled his finger back so fast that he undoubtedly did hurt him after all.  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” he gasped, utterly wretched.  
  
He fingered Crowley open as quickly as he could without doing more harm, nudging his corporation as he did so to keep his erection up. He just wanted this over with. He just wanted to be done. He just wanted not to have to hurt Crowley, who he loved, in order for him to have a shot at living through this.  
  
Thanks to all that nudging, he didn’t last more than two minutes inside Crowley. He waited, feeling his sweat sting at the wound in his arm, and did not Fall.  
  
_Please, God, what does it take? What’s a sin in your eyes that warrants Falling if not this?_  
  
Innahon came up behind him, and loomed over them both. Aziraphale clutched Crowley to him, his good wing curling around him as though he could offer any sort of protection. He didn’t even try to resist as Innahon put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him back so he could get a better look.  
  
“Is this not the Effort of his that you pictured, Principality Aziraphale?” Innahon asked.  
  
“It is,” Aziraphale replied, which wasn’t untrue even if it wasn’t wholly true. The whole truth was that he expected that Crowley would manifest different Efforts with even greater frequency than he presented different genders. He knew, for example, that the size and shape of the bulge his Effort made in his tight jeans had varied greatly over the past few years alone. The knowledge jumped out at him from his mental pit, and it _burned_.  
  
“I don’t believe you,” Innahon said.  
  
“It’s true,” Aziraphale insisted. “It’s true, I swear to you on all that’s holy-”  
  
Innahon waved, and the archangels closed in to drag him back. One of them grabbed him by his broken wing and _twisted_, and he screamed in pain.  
  
Crowley was screaming too, as Innahon forced his Effort to change.  
  
“Please,” Aziraphale begged. “Please, please stop. You’re hurting him, please stop.” The begging was no more useful than his apologies.  
  
Eventually, Innahon stepped away, leaving Crowley to shiver on the floor, looking as terrible as Aziraphale felt, if not worse.  
  
“Get to it, then,” Innahon said, indicating the demon. “Or do you need me to help you again?”  
  
Aziraphale shuddered. “No, no. I’ll do that myself.”  
  
He shuffled forwards on his knees, nudging himself all the while. He reached for Crowley, doing his best to be gentle as he turned him so they were facing one another. Crowley’s eyes locked onto his, and then he let out the same four-grunt sound that Aziraphale had though might be his name and dropped his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder.  
  
“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale said helplessly. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Crowley grunted, and turned his head so it was buried in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck. Aziraphale took a moment to run his fingers through the long hair on the back of his head. He still had no right to offer comfort, but if Crowley was seeking it out…  
  
“Get on with it,” Innahon admonished.  
  
“Right,” Aziraphale said thickly.  
  
He worked a hand between them, fingers probing cautiously between Crowley’s legs. He tried not to remember how terrible it had felt, when Innahon had done the same to him just a little while before. Crowley shivered, and pressed his face more firmly against Aziraphale’s neck.  
  
He was tight, and barely even moist, which was more than fair under the circumstances. But it also meant that if Aziraphale wasn’t careful he would hurt him, maybe even make him bleed, and that was the last thing he wanted.  
  
If they were doing this for real, he’d use his mouth. He’d take Crowley apart again and again until he was drunk on it, then finger him open until Crowley was begging for his cock. For a few seconds he considered it, and even got as far as trying to shift Crowley into a better position for it, and then common sense reasserted itself.  
  
He didn’t get to have that. In all likelihood he never would have been able to have that, and he certainly was never going to have it now.

He reached for the lubricant instead. That, at least, would make things less painful for Crowley.  
  
“You were about to do something else,” piped the female-presenting archangel who wasn’t Paltithael.  
  
“No I wasn’t!” Even to Aziraphale’s ears, the lie was obvious. “I wasn’t, I just-”  
  
The archangel brought the tip of her spear down nearly to bear again Crowley’s throat. Aziraphale jerked the demon out of the way, and covered him as best he could.  
  
“Tell the truth!” she ordered.  
  
“I wasn’t going to do anything but reach for the lube!” Aziraphale insisted.  
  
Behind him Innahon sighed. “Attempting to prolong your Fall is counterproductive, Principality Aziraphale.”  
  
“I’m not,” Aziraphale told him miserably. “I’m not trying to prolong anything, I don’t know why I haven’t Fallen already, I just want to stop hurting him!” Crowley squirmed until he had his face buried in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck again. This time Aziraphale understood it as the offer of comfort that it was, and nearly broke down in tears. Crowley was the one being raped. He shouldn’t feel like comforting anyone, much less Aziraphale. “I don’t want to hurt him.”  
  
“Well you clearly want to do _something_ to the demon,” the male-presenting archangel drawled.  
  
“You say you don’t wish to prolong anything,” Innahon said, before the archangels could really get started with another round of sniggering. “Then prove it.”  
  
Aziraphale took a deep breath to steady himself, was not steadied at all, and got to it anyway.  
  
_I’m sorry,_ he thought. _I’m sorry._ He smeared the words between Crowley’s legs. _I’m sorry._ His tongue formed them against Crowley’s clit. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…_  
  
Crowley shook apart above him. Aziraphale kept his eyes closed. He didn’t feel like he had any right to see it.  
  
He reached for the lube again. If nothing else, he could make sure that this wasn’t physically injuring him.  
  
He nudged himself to full hardness as he stretched Crowley out, and slicked up his own cock. Then he found that while it had been hard for him to fuck himself on Crowley’s cock earlier, it was going to be impossible to do it the other way around. Crowley’s pants were tighter. They didn’t have the give, and with his legs bound together there wasn’t a whole lot Aziraphale could do about it.  
  
The angels watched him struggle for a minute or so, and then the male-presenting archangel grabbed him by his broken wing. Aziraphale fell back with a cry on pain, his vision swimming so badly that he could barely make out how he stabbed down between Crowley’s legs and tore his pants apart.  
  
“Good thinking, Amnoniel,” Innahon said approvingly.  
  
Aziraphale hunched over himself, wishing he could put his wings away, but he couldn’t fold them without causing himself more pain than he could stand. He wished he could Fall already, but only God Herself could judge him unworthy. The only thing he could do was to shuffle forwards, and try to nudge himself closer and closer to the edge, so he wouldn’t have to force himself on Crowley for too long.  
  
It wasn’t exactly a surprise when this latest iteration failed to cause him to Fall. But he still felt a sense of overwhelming despair as he came, and still, nothing happened.  
  
Crowley tried to catch his eye. His gaze was too soft and understanding, and Aziraphale avoided it. He could just barely stand to hurt him, if it saved his life. He wasn’t sure he could stand being forgiven for it.  
  
“We’re only going to keep doing this until you finally Fall,” Innahon told him.  
  
“I don’t know why this isn’t working,” Aziraphale told him. “I don’t know why, I don’t-”  
  
Innahon dragged him off of Crowley. “What else have you thought to do to the demon Crowley?”  
  
_Too much,_ Aziraphale thought. _I’ve wanted him too much and this must be my punishment._ He stayed silent, however. He didn’t think that they needed the ammunition.  
  
And he was right.  
  
“I’ve got an idea,” said the archangel who, by process of elimination, must be Kedesha.

It was night by then, and from there the night progressed. The angels came up with things to try, and Aziraphale complied. Crowley was raped, and Aziraphale raped him and he didn’t Fall and he didn’t understand _why_.

Gradually, their clothing was removed: torn, ripped, and cut from them until there was nothing left but their socks and a few scraps of cloth beneath Crowley’s bindings. Gradually, the angels became more explicit in their orders, and became crueler in their taunts. Gradually, Aziraphale was coming around to the idea that perhaps he had Fallen and didn’t remember, because this certainly seemed like what Hell would be like.

“You know, I think that the only thing left for it is the demon’s mouth,” said Paltithael.

“It must be that forked tongue that has him so hot and bothered,” said Kedesha.

“If you’d told us that earlier, Principality Aziraphale, this could have been over a long time ago,” Innahon chided.

Aziraphale didn’t respond. He hadn’t spoken for hours now. It did no good. He had to focus his energy on things that might actually matter: on keeping Crowley as relatively unharmed as possible, on complying with orders so they wouldn’t have an excuse to get nasty, on praying.

_Please, God, I don’t know how much more of this I can take..._

He was clutching Crowley to his chest, but he let go when they reached for him. Trying to hold on was even more useless than trying to speak, and Crowley had a long scratch across his torso in evidence of that. He let himself be manhandled into his armchair. He bit back a scream as Innahon miracled him hard again. They’d stopped letting either of them nudge themselves along, or change Efforts a while back- some time before Aziraphale had stopped speaking. They brought Crowley between his legs, and at long last undid the gag from his mouth.

“Go on, then,” said Amnoniel, shoving Aziraphale in the shoulder. Pain lanced up his broken wing, which was now hanging at a severe angle after all the twisting it had undergone. “We’ve all watched you do this to him, so we all know you have some idea of how this is done.”

Aziraphale tried to summon the energy to comply. They would only hurt Crowley themselves if he didn’t, he told himself sternly, watching his arm refuse to reach out for the demon.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley rasped. He half coughed it, unable to speak properly. The chafing Aziraphale had noticed earlier had long since turned to open sores, and blood coated his mouth black. “Aziraphale, angel, it’s not your fault. Look at me, it’s not your fault, none of this is your fault.”

Aziraphale didn’t hear his words so much as he was shattered by them. It would have been better if he’d said that he hated him. It would have _made sense_.

A loud sob echoed around the room. It took Aziraphale a moment to realize that it had come from him.

“What lies are these?” Innahon said.

“I don’t lie, not to him,” Crowley insisted. “And you can’t make him Fall like this.”

Aziraphale found he could move his arm again. He used it to bury his face in his hand and weep.

“Look, it’s the first rule they teach you in tempter’s school: actions performed under duress just don’t stick to a soul right. They have to be chosen and meant.”

“He’s chosen to Fall like this!” Innahon snarled.

“He’s chosen to save my life! And this is the only option you’ve given him that might do that,” Crowley snarled right back.

“Enough of this! Aziraphale, get on with it, or-”

“You’re torturing him!” Crowley cried. “You’re torturing him, and you’re using me as an instrument to do it!”

Aziraphale couldn’t stop crying, any moment now they were going to do something terrible to Crowley and he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t stop crying.

“You realize that, don’t you? No, no. Wrong question. You’ve known that all along,” Crowley said. “You can’t hide from me, I can see right through you. Did you know _that_? Did you know that I would be able to see that just because none of you have made any Efforts doesn’t mean you aren’t _getting off_ on-”

Paltithael grabbed him by the hair and jabbed her spear beneath his chin. Crowley fell silent.

“Don’t,” Aziraphale gasped. He was still weeping. He still couldn’t stop. “Don’t, please-”

“Hold him down,” Innahon snapped. Amnoniel and Kedesha grabbed hold of him. Aziraphale choked on a scream as Amnoniel elbowed his broken wing in the process. “The Principality Aziraphale will Fall, and you, Serpent Crowley, will be instrument we use to do it.”

Crowley sneered, unable to make any other response with Paltithael’s spear still beneath his chin.

“Do it,” Innahon snapped. Paltithael pried open Crowley’s mouth, and push him forward onto Aziraphale’s cock.

There was for a moment an unpleasant scraping of teeth, and then Crowley quickly covered them with his lips. He was no more willing to hurt Aziraphale than Aziraphale was to hurt him.

He had no more say in the matter than Aziraphale had either. Paltithael dragged him up and down on Aziraphale’s cock, and neither one of them wanted to be there and-

“Something’s changing,” Paltithael said, and then, very quickly, her hands were no longer on Crowley’s head. Amnoniel and Kedesha’s hands were no longer holding him down either. Someone’s spear fell onto him, and he grabbed it on instinct.

He dropped it on instinct, too. It _burned_ like an unholy thing. It turned black and tarnished even as Aziraphale dropped it, nearly on Paltithael, who was writhing on the floor.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, tremendously wrong, and something was bubbling just beneath her skin. Her fingers were contracting into claws as he watched, and her wings manifested with a flurry of embers, already charred black.

“Satan!” Crowley swore, as he threw himself back.

“Oh my God,” Aziraphale agreed.

She was Falling. They were all Falling. Innahon foamed at the mouth, and Kedesha beat her hands against the floor as new fingers crawled forth, and Amnoniel threw his head back as horns burst from it in a splatter of black blood. He screamed. He was the first, but definitely not the last.

“Oh my God,” Aziraphale said again, this time in realization. There weren’t many things an angel could do against other angels, but there were plenty of things that could be done against demons.

He grabbed Crowley and dragged them both into the kitchen.

“Stay there!” he ordered, hauling him into the chair by the fireplace.

“But-”

“I don’t want to risk splashing you! Stay there!” He didn’t bother with trying to gather the right materials physically. He just miracled his largest pot from his cabinet and then the tap water directly from the pipes. He sped through the chant: _Blessed are you, Lord, all-powerful God, who in Christ, the living water of salvation, blessed and transformed us…_

The screaming had mostly tapered off by the time he’d finished. He grabbed the pot and went back into the sitting room. Innahon alone had the strength to turn towards him, his mouth now full of too many teeth.

Aziraphale threw the pot of now-holy water over them all. His aim was true, and all four dissolved with a shriek, leaving behind nothing but four toxic-looked sludges on the floor.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley called out.

Aziraphale jerked himself away from the sight of them, and turned back to the kitchen, miracling a pair of scissors as he did so.

“You got them?” Crowley asked as Aziraphale cut the bindings off of him.

“I got them all,” Aziraphale told him. Once Crowley was freed, he healed the worst of his wounds, and Crowley reconstituted his clothing onto himself. “I got them all, and you need to leave.”

“What?”

“Four angels just Fell, Crowley. They Fell, and I created an entire vat of holy water in my kitchen,” Aziraphale replied. “There will be questions. You can’t be here while I answer them.”

“Right,” Crowley said, running a hand through his hair. “Right, that’s- I did it.”

“What?”

“That’s what I’m about to tell my bosses. I caused four angels to Fall- with Pride, and Lust, and all that- and then I sent them after you.”

“And I managed to defeat them,” Aziraphale said. “Never knowing how recently they had been angels. Yes, that- that fits well enough, I suppose.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Crowley nodded and then reached out, drawing Aziraphale into a careful one-armed hug that avoided his broken wing entirely. “You saved my life,” he hissed. “That’s what really happened. You saved my life. Remember that.”

“I- I’ll try,” Aziraphale said.

“We’ll talk. Later. Friday night, at nine, St. James’ park?”

“The usual bench,” Aziraphale agreed. “Now, you really need to-”

“Yep, leaving,” Crowley said. He pulled a pair of sunglasses that almost certainly hadn’t existed before out of his jacket and put them on, and then was gone into the morning sunshine.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. He needed clothes. He couldn’t miracle the ones he’d been wearing whole, as Crowley had. No matter how deep he pushed this past night into his mental pit, some part of him would always know what had happened to them. He thought about getting a change of clothing from upstairs, but no. That wasn’t going to happen either.

In the end he just conjured up a pair of soft trousers from ether, and limped past his sitting room into the floor of his shop. He pulled back the rug, lit the candles, and called Heaven to tell them some version of what had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale fucks Crowley, once, which fails to make him Fall. He panics, and there's a brief fight with the angels holding them hostage. Though Aziraphale does manage to inflict some damage, he ultimately loses that fight, and they break one of his wings in retaliation. Innahon forces Aziraphale's Effort to change, and then forces him to fuck Crowley again. Aziraphale prays to Fall so that he can stop, fully believing himself to be a rapist. He concentrates on trying to make the experience as least physically painful as possible. The angels continue to make them fuck: they grow crueler as the night continues, twisting at Aziraphale's broken wing, tearing their clothing off, using Innahon's powers to manipulate their bodies into differently shaped Efforts and states of arousal, and becoming more explicit in their demands as to how Aziraphale fucks Crowley. Eventually, they take Crowley's gag off in order to make Aziraphale fuck his face. Crowley tells Aziraphale that it isn't his fault, prompting a slight breakdown. He then tells off the angels, until they eventually restrain both of them and physically force Crowley to fellate Aziraphale. This causes the four invading angels to Fall. Aziraphale very quickly drags them both into the kitchen, and creates a large pot of holy water, which he uses to kill the newly Fallen demons. He quickly frees Crowley from his bindings and then tells him to leave, as the creation of holy water would ping Heaven's radar, and Aziraphale is going to need to answer some questions soon. They agree to meet on Friday at St. James' park, and part ways.


	3. Cry of the People Oppressed In Egypt, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so: I wrote chapter three, and it was over ten thousand words long, and that seemed a little long to post on the kinkmeme all at once, so I split it up into three parts. I'm going to post each of the parts up here as I finish writing each of the three planned scenes of chapter four. So for those of you who followed along on the kinkmeme: yes, I am now one third of the way through part four, and no it is not going to be any shorter than part three. 
> 
> There are no more graphic descriptions of rape or torture from here on out, though Aziraphale does occasionally think back on events briefly. It's all recovery from here on out, more or less. There's going to be some comforting, even, eventually, once Heaven is done aggravating everything.

Apparently, when one called Heaven in a bit of a state, to say that four demons had broken into one’s shop and held one captive for several hours, but it was all sorted now, holy water saw to that, and yes, they were armed, and no, one wasn’t sure one had doused all of their weapons, but as long as someone was being sent down anyway, perhaps a medic could come as well, as one’s wing was rather more broken than one was comfortable dealing with on one’s own…  
  
Well, when one did that, then evidentially that required that a veritable battalion of angels would descend upon one’s home.  
  
Gabriel, he’d expected, and likewise he’d known that there would be technicians to poke over the scene, bull-in-a-china-shop fashion. The medic he’d asked for. It was the other three Archangels- capital-A Archangels, this time, who outranked him by two entire spheres- whose presence surprised him. Well, the Archangels, and the guards they’d brought with them to stand by the doors and look imposing. Those were a surprise too.  
  
“You look like shit, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said. To his highly begrudged credit, he seemed genuinely horrified.  
  
“Thanks,” Aziraphale replied. “I’ve spent the better part of the last-” He leaned back to check the clock. He’d returned home around four yesterday afternoon, which meant that it had been- “-sixteen hours being tortured by demons.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah. I can tell.”  
  
The rest of the angels filed in without speaking to him, save for the medic, who told him in no uncertain terms to sit down. Michael and Sandalphon followed the technicians into his sitting room. Gabriel and Uriel sat across from him at the kitchen table. The bottle of pisco he’d intended to split with Crowley sat between them, a mocking reminder of how little control he had here.  
  
They had the courtesy to wait until the medic had numbed his wing before they started asking him questions.  
  
“How’d they get the drop on you?” Gabriel asked.  
  
“They were waiting to ambush me when I arrived home. I’m just back from Peru, you see- I was tracking the demon Crowley. I don’t know how they got past the wards- are they still there? I didn’t think to check, I just called as soon as I had assured myself that they were really dead.”  
  
He _had_ checked, actually. The moment the Metatron had cut their connection, he’d wrapped the remains of Crowley’s bindings in the tatters of his clothing, willed the lot of it into a bin behind Madame Jojo’s where Heaven would never think to look and the humans would never notice anything amiss, reached for the wards, and then taken them down with a great deal more violence than he normally would. Hopefully it would look like a demon had demolished the whole thing. The ward Innahon had put up before Falling had been corrupted as he Fell, and the lingering demonic energy from that would hopefully support his version of events.  
  
Uriel closed their eyes for a moment in concentration, and then shook their head, so he must have done it correctly.  
  
“They’ve been taken down,” they confirmed. “And corrupted in places.”  
  
“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll have to take care of that, then.” He wondered if he would be able to get away with putting up more wards that would guard against angels as well as demons.  
  
“We can get some of our people to do that,” Gabriel said with a wave of his hand. “Don’t trouble yourself with it.” So the answer to that question was, undoubtably, no. It was a shame, really: he was far more bothered by angels here in his bookshop than he ever had been by demons.  
  
Well, Crowley came around and bothered him a fair bit, but he was a nuisance at his worst, not the Principality Innahon. He wasn’t even an Archangel Gabriel level bother, really.  
  
“What did they want?”  
  
“Mostly to see me suffer, I think.” When had Aziraphale learned to lie so well? “There were a few questions in the beginning about my activities with the demon Crowley- or, rather, against the demon Crowley. But they didn’t really seem to be interested in anything I had to say about it after the first hour or so.”  
  
The medic was busy doing something to his wing that he could tell would have hurt considerably without the miraculous numbing. It made it hard to concentrate as Uriel asked “But you did tell them something?”  
  
“Nothing specific,” Aziraphale said. “Nothing _sensitive_. I confirmed that I was the angel who went around thwarting the demon Crowley, but it was doubtful they came here without knowing that, and if I’d managed to convince them otherwise they probably would have tried to kill me outright.”  
  
Gabriel opened his mouth, but before any further questions could arise the medic interjected with “When was your wing broken?”  
  
“Originally? Probably… I don’t know. Early on. Fifteen to fourteen hours ago, or so?” Aziraphale replied. “They kept twisting at it. I imagine that’s compounded things a bit.”  
  
“You’ve got a real big stretch of ulna that’s more bone fragments than anything else,” the medic informed him.  
  
“Yes, it was deeply unpleasant,” Aziraphale confirmed.  
  
Gabriel and Uriel exchanged looks. Aziraphale didn’t bother trying to guess what that meant. They would tell him if they felt he needed to know, or more likely, they would forget to forward him the memo and he’d have to piece it together from the rude notes they sent in its place.  
  
There was a loud crash from the sitting room.  
  
“Please be careful!” Aziraphale said, tamping down on the urge to get up and check on whatever it was that the technicians were breaking- hopefully not one of the climate-controlled cabinets. It would have upset the medic, for one thing. For another, he wasn’t sure he could stand to hear Gabriel’s lecture on not being attached to material things right now. “Honestly, it’s going to take me the rest of the week to get this place human presentable as it is.”  
  
Gabriel looked about ready to launch into his usual lecture anyway, but Uriel cut him off. “So this wasn’t an interrogation?” they asked.  
  
“I don’t think that was their primary aim, no,” Aziraphale said. “After a while it became obvious that they thought they could torture me into Falling.”  
  
Gabriel’s attention, divided by the busy clutter of Aziraphale’s kitchen, snapped back to him immediately. “What?”  
  
“They thought they could torture me into Falling. That seemed to be their primary aim, provided there was a primary aim. The questions about my activities thwarting the demon Crowley mostly served to confirm my identity.” There was another, somewhat smaller crash. Aziraphale winced. “I did try to fight them off. I even managed to grab ahold of one of their spears at one point.” He held up his hand, which had blistered when he’d grabbed the spear of whichever archangel had dropped it on him. “Nothing worked until they started fighting amongst themselves over whose fault it was that they were here. While they were all rolling over one another on the floor, I managed to make it into the kitchen, and made enough holy water to get all of them.”  
  
The medic reached over and grabbed his wrist. “You have an unholy burn on your hand and that wasn’t the first thing you told me about?” she demanded.  
  
“I- no?” Aziraphale replied. “I didn’t?”  
  
The medic clucked her tongue. “This man is in shock,” she said to Gabriel and Uriel.  
  
“Oh, that makes sense,” Aziraphale said. There was a strange coldness between him and the rest of the world, or it seemed. Shock seemed as reasonable an explanation as any for it. “So, hot cup of tea and a blanket, is it?”  
  
“What?” the medic demanded, after a moment of bewildered silence.  
  
“Sorry, that’s- that’s the human remedy for it. Shock,” he clarified, swallowing the urge to giggle. “I did a good line of those, during the Blitz.”  
  
At that moment, there was a flurry of sound and movement from the sitting room. Aziraphale wasn’t alone in turning towards it. He was alone in throwing himself out of his chair and immediately picking it up to use as a weapon, but then again, he was the only one who’d suddenly had an unholy spear shoved under his nose.

“Gah!” he shouted.  
  
“What is the meaning of this?” Sandalphon asked, brandishing the spear.  
  
“Jesus Christ!” Gabriel said, leaping to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him.  
  
“Sandalphon!” Michael shouted, still in the sitting room.  
  
Uriel sat where they were, frozen.  
  
“Soldiers!” spat the medic. “Subhanallah, but I will never understand what She was thinking when She made you idiots.”  
  
Aziraphale focused on keeping his chair up and between him and the spear Sandalphon was waving at him. The Archangel had torn off a piece of the rug Aziraphale had had in front of the hearth and was using it to insulate himself from corrosive effects of the spear, which was just adding insult to injury, really.  
  
“What is the meaning of this?” Sandalphon repeated.  
  
Aziraphale spluttered a bit, but before he could quite wrap his head around the question Michael entered the room.  
  
“Sandalphon!” she said again, in sharp rebuke. When that failed to break the standoff, she made it an order. “Stand down. Both of you.”  
  
Aziraphale lowered the chair.  
  
“Now,” Michael said. This time it was less of an order and more of a threat. Sandalphon tossed the spear onto the table.  
  
“I still require an answer,” Sandalphon told him.  
  
“It’s one of the demon’s weapons,” Aziraphale said, clutching tightly to the back of the chair. “They were all armed with spears. It’s what the technicians were searching for?”  
  
“Can I just-” The medic attempted to intervene.  
  
Sandalphon interrupted her with a disgusted noise. “I know that! I meant this!” He carefully unwrapped the spear without touching it.  
  
The bottom half of the spear’s haft had been caught in the splash zone and melted by the holy water, but the rest of it was intact, including the personal sigil of the angel who had been issued it.  
  
In this case, it was the sigil of the Principality Innahon.  
  
Aziraphale decided to let one of the others, who were gathered around squinting at the metal, say it first. After a moment, Uriel obliged. “The Principality Innahon?”  
  
“I know him,” Aziraphale said, hoping he sounded surprised. “He had been assigned to the Sea People, right? Just at the start of Babylonian Captivity?” They hadn’t been able to confirm or deny a connection between the Sea People and the Tribe of Dan, and so they’d had a Principality assigned to them. By the time the Bronze Age had stopped collapsing, word from on high had been that they were going to stop assigning new titles each time a Principality was given a new providence, as nations had a tendency to collapse after a few hundred years, and peoples were even more nebulous constructs. Eventually, it seemed to Aziraphale that even the mere idea of giving Principalities a providence fell by the wayside, though the titles stayed in place. Therefore, Innahon had remained Principality of the Sea People, as Aziraphale was Principality of the Eastern Gate long after the Eden had been removed from the world. “When did he Fall?”  
  
“He didn’t,” Sandalphon snarled. “He was under my command, and I spoke to him only last week.”  
  
“Well, he very clearly did Fall,” Michael said, gesturing towards the corrupted weapon.  
  
“Getting back to my point about-” the medic tried again.  
  
“And then he attacked one of my guys!” Gabriel said. “What was he even doing down here? You haven’t had to do anything down here since Jesus was born!”  
  
Sandalphon, who didn’t recognize Jesus as the messiah on the grounds that _he_ was supposed to have announced the coming of the messiah after the brit milah, rather than having Gabriel announce it upon his conception, bristled. Uriel, who had similar, if less personal, reservations winced. So did Aziraphale, who really didn’t wish to get into it, especially not in his kitchen, and especially not _now_.  
  
“He was doing surveillance,” Sandalphon ground out.  
  
“Surveillance on what?” Gabriel demanded.  
  
If there was one benefit to having this many Archangels in his kitchen it was that he wasn’t required to speak all that much. He just had to hang back and let the ego take over.  
  
“On the demon Crowley,” Sandalphon said after a moment. Aziraphale felt a terrible sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling that a more truthful answer would have been _on the Principality Aziraphale_.  
  
Of course it was. Innahon had said as much, hadn’t he, when Aziraphale had arrived home yesterday evening. Sandalphon had sent one of his Principalities to spy on him, and when evidence of his collusion with Crowley had been uncovered, this had been the result.  
  
“Why?” Gabriel demanded, waving towards Aziraphale. “We have him handled!”  
  
“We had received reports that indicated that the demon was planning something big,” Sandalphon continued.  
  
“Like the Fall of a Principality?” Aziraphale asked. “_Two_ Principalities, I suppose. If not more. Did he have a team? Innahon?”  
  
“Look, can I-”  
  
Once more, Sandalphon spoke over the medic. “He had three archangels attending him. When last we spoke they were about to collect all the _evidence_ they needed to be able to tell what the demon was planning.” His glare grew particularly sharp on the word evidence.  
  
If he was parsing that right, it meant that they’d told Sandalphon that they’d found evidence that Aziraphale and Crowley were working together, but he didn’t currently have any proof that could be presented to Heaven. He didn’t relax. He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. This was far from over.  
  
“I was attacked by a group of four,” Aziraphale confirmed grimly. “The attendants might very well have been the other three. He might have been the ringleader. I’m not sure I would have recognized him with all those teeth, before, but now that it’s been pointed out I can kind of see the resemblance.”  
  
Uriel cleared their throat. “You said that the demon Crowley was in Peru?”  
  
“Well, he was meant to be,” Aziraphale said. “And while there was definitely quite a bit of evidence of demonic activity-” By which he meant Evil that was being done by humans to other humans, almost certainly without any sort of celestial intervention at all, but if either side had been able to discern _that_ the Arrangement would have been a much trickier thing to work out “-I didn’t seen hide nor scale of the demon himself. I figured he must have given me the run around, and so I came back here.”  
  
“He never left,” Sandalphon said. “My Principality and his team had eyes on him the whole time.”  
  
“And you didn’t think to tell _me_?” Gabriel demanded. “The boss of the guy who’s been able to handle everything that demon’s got without Falling?” The _While you lost four angels the first time they tried anything_ went unspoken, but heard by all.  
  
Sandalphon had no response to that. This was an embarrassment for him, Aziraphale knew: he wouldn’t be able to run any sort of unofficial operations like the one Innahon had apparently been heading for quite some time. He still didn’t relax. Actually, he rather felt like picking up the chair again.  
  
He was beginning to see the shape of the _why_ here, and he didn’t like the look of it one bit.  
  
“What were you thinking?” Gabriel asked.  
  
“Yes, and I’d quite like to know that as well,” Michael said, eyebrow raised.  
  
Uriel said nothing, which considering how close they normally were to Sandalphon spoke volumes.  
  
“Well, I think-” the medic began.  
  
“There was the suggestion that Principality Aziraphale himself might be close to Falling,” Sandalphon blurted out.  
  
Aziraphale waved behind him to indicate his wings, which were still white. The gesture was likely lost in the flurry over movement that accompanied everyone shouting at once.  
  
Gabriel. “If you had heard reports-”  
  
Michael. “We have proper channels for this kind of-”  
  
Uriel. “You could have come to me, I would have told you-”  
  
The medic, who had lost all semblance of patience. “**YA ALLAH**!” she said in a voice like a trumpet blast. The room fell silent.  
  
“The Principality Aziraphale is my patient,” she continued. “He has been tortured, and he is likely in shock. I have not been able to conduct an examination, and having you all hover around us is not helping. No more questions or discussions requiring his input may take place until I finish, and even then I reserve the right to place him on rest.”  
  
“Izzy-” Gabriel began.  
  
“Gabe,” was the flat, entirely unimpressed reply. “Are you challenging my jurisdiction over patients?”  
  
Oh. Well, then. Apparently he rated _five_ Archangels.  
  
“Nope,” Gabriel said, popping the p. “Just letting you know, we’re still going to need to debrief him properly.”  
  
“I’ll let you know when,” she said, before turning to Aziraphale. “Is there another room somewhere?”  
  
“I have a bedroom upstairs,” Aziraphale said. “Erm- well, the stairs do have a rather sharp turn and they are a bit narrow, though. Am I good to put my wings back?”  
  
“You should be able to bend them, but I wouldn’t put them away just yet, not even temporarily,” she said. “Come on, lead the way.”

Aziraphale led the way. It was difficult to tell for certain with his wings still numb, but he did think that he managed the sharp turn without brushing his wings up against anything.  
  
“So, Israfil,” he said, as they approached the landing. “I haven’t seen you this side of Muhammad, peace be upon him.” He was actually quite relieved to have gotten the memo about her name change at all, even though it had only reached him a good two centuries after being issued.  
  
“You haven’t seen me this side of the Fall of Man,” she corrected, which was certainly true. He vaguely remembered seeing her in the Garden, telling Adam and Eve a little of the history of the world that they’d been created into. Of course, she’d been Raphael then, and not presenting with any particular gender. If it hadn’t been for the familiarity she’d displayed with Gabriel, Aziraphale wouldn’t have recognized her at all. “I see you’ve stayed off the leg.”  
  
“Yes, well, needs must,” Aziraphale replied. “It doesn’t bother me, when I’m down here.”  
  
“It doesn’t heal when you’re down here either,” Israfil scoffed.  
  
Aziraphale held open the door to his bedroom for her. She cleared it of dust with a snap of her fingers. “Take a seat,” she said.  
  
He sat, and tried not to resent her.  
  
She worked on the burn on his hand first. It wasn’t especially painful, and he said as much.  
  
“That’s not a good sign,” she snapped. Aziraphale decided it would be best if he sat silently and let her work.  
  
She moved from his hand to his wing, and once those were safe to put away she moved down to his torso. A rib he’d not quite been aware had broken eased back into place, and the wound on his arm closed.  
  
“You were raped.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
Aziraphale rather felt like it should have been. “What?”  
  
“Raped,” Israfil said. “Your corporation was violated in ways which mimicked the act of sexual intercourse.”  
  
“Yes, I’ve been down here for nearly six thousand years, I know what rape is, thank you very much,” Aziraphale snapped. He sighed, immediately feeling guilty. This wasn’t her fault. “I’m sorry. I just- I wouldn’t call it that.”  
  
“What would you call it?” Israfil asked, far too damnably _calm_.  
  
“I’d call it-” he cast about for something that would be true enough without being incriminating. “I’d call it keeping alive until I could get the upper hand.”  
  
Israfil snorted. “Sure, if it helps you to think of it that way. You’re a total badass who had it all under control the whole time.”  
  
Aziraphale laughed. It was high-pitched and slightly desperate sound, like nails scrabbling for purchase against glass.  
  
It took him a long time to stop.  
  
“I prayed, you know?” he said, since the hysterics seemed to warrant some sort of explanation. “I prayed to Fall, so that it would stop. I don’t know why I didn’t.”  
  
“I’m not the Metatron, obviously,” Israfil said, after a moment. “I can’t speak for Her. But if I had to guess, I’d say that you didn’t Fall because She understood the intent behind your words. Many pray to Allah to end their suffering, reach to Her while in pain. There’s no shame in it.”  
  
There might not have been any shame in his prayers, but he sure felt a lot of shame over everything else he’d done last night. He could say nothing of this- not Israfil, not to anyone, really.  
  
“May I sit?” Israfil asked.  
  
“Of course.” There was no reason for her not to.  
  
They sat side by side on the bed Aziraphale had never used for anything sleep related. There was a silence between them, though the room was not silent. Sandalphon and Gabriel were having a thunderous argument below them, which Michael was attempting to referee without directly participating in, with predictable success.  
  
He could probably have made out the words, if he’d tried. He probably should have tried. Instead he merely noted, with a more detached than usual amazement, how incredible it was that Sandalphon could audibly pronounce _G-d_.  
  
With the medical examination over with and his wings folded away, he was also becoming acutely aware of the fact that he was half naked. He missed having cuffs to worry at. He swung his feet instead, slightly, not enough to make the bed shake.  
  
He was still wearing the socks he’d been wearing when he’d boarded the plane in Lima. They were plush and cashmere, the sort of extremely comfortable clothing that Aziraphale adored. Aziraphale’s feet itched. He was going to need to be rid of these socks, when he was able to dress. The left one had a stain in it, black demon’s blood. Crowley’s blood- or, no. It could also have been Amnoniel’s. He’d bled quite a lot, as those horns had erupted.  
  
He’d been the one to bleed Crowley, too. He’d dug the tip of his spear in just hard enough to break the skin, leaving behind a thin trail of blood bracketed by red, irritated welts. He’d dragged it slowly along his chest as Crowley’s eyes had rolled back in his head with the agony of it and Aziraphale had thrashed between the two other archangels before going limp, pleading and apologizing all the while to no avail. Amnoniel hadn’t had any mercy. He’d stopped when Innahon had told him to.  
  
Crowley had nearly passed out. Aziraphale had no doubt that they would have demanded he continue to defile his unconscious body if he had. They’d made it plain that they’d considered Crowley’s body to be the only relevant part of him.  
  
“Do you want a new corporation?” Israfil asked.  
  
If nothing else, the question startled him out of his train of thought. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“A new corporation,” Israfil repeated. “I can put in a medical expedite for you, have you back down here in a year, maybe less.”  
  
The idea was instinctively appalling to him, though he was having a difficult time coming up with a suitable reason why. “Did I suffer any sort of lasting damage?” he asked, looking down at himself. The demon’s blood on his sock was the only indication that anyone had bled at all last night, so far as he could see, at least.  
  
“Not physically, no,” Israfil said. “It’s not uncommon, though, to feel repelled by your body after such an ordeal. So long as we have to ability to bypass that, I like to offer the option.”  
  
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, repressing a shudder. It didn’t matter what body he inhabited. It would be corrupted by last night because he would be in it, and he would be the person who had done those things. “But I’d just as soon as stay with what I have.” Besides, he’d promised to meet Crowley on Friday, and a year was far, far too long for him to willingly stay away from Earth under any circumstances.  
  
“Suit yourself.”  
  
The silence between them resumed. Below them, Gabriel and Sandalphon were still arguing. Michael seemed to have given up any pretense of impartiality, and the argument was now a three-way free-for-all.  
  
Color him shocked.  
  
He did hope Crowley was having a better time of it with his people than Aziraphale was having with his. Then again, it generally seemed like he did have an easier time of it, against all expectations. Commendations for things he hadn’t even known the particulars of, no reprimands or restrictions on what sort of miracles he could perform… Aziraphale could count the number of reprimands he knew Crowley had received for any offense on one hand and still have fingers left over.  
  
They’d been brutal, but they’d also been few.  
  
But surely the Fall of four angels must be no small feather in his cap, no matter how short their lives as demons had been. They couldn’t fault him for that, could they? After all, as far as they knew, Aziraphale was an extraordinarily formidable foe.  
  
The idea seemed quite laughable now: that Aziraphale would be _formidable_. And, of course, they hadn’t even pretended to be foes for years, not really. Not when it was just the two of them. Not when they didn’t have their respective sides to perform for.  
  
Next to him on the bed, Israfil shifted, slouching against one of the bedposts with her arms crossed, one leg hiked slightly higher up on the mattress than the other. It was a very Crowley pose, and it suddenly occurred to Aziraphale that they must have known each other, before the Fall.  
  
Oh, many angels had a hand in making the stars, but Israfil had been in charge of them, and he couldn’t imagine Crowley not standing out, not showing off, not being at the center of attention.  
  
Of course, he had difficulty imagining Crowley as being an angel at all, because that would require imagining Crowley as being different. Crowley was always so… _himself_, and herself, and themself, and eirself, and hirself and thonself and all the other selves the English language had not yet quite managed to adequately express. Crowley was always curious, always mischievous, and always _kind_, no matter how much he snarled when Aziraphale described him as such.  
  
He supposed that might be the difference. If Crowley were an angel he’d be allowed to claim his kindness. It wouldn’t get him very far in Heaven, but he’d be allowed it.  
  
_Did she ever wonder about what became of him, the angel-who-would-be-Crowley?_ Aziraphale wondered. He didn’t look at her, but he did see her reflection in the warped- though now highly polished- metal of the doorknob. _Did she ever try to track him down?_  
  
He didn’t ask. If she had tracked him down, then she undoubtedly believed him to be the architect of all of this, rather than the main victim. If she hadn’t even tried, then that was an answer all its own. If she’d tried and failed, then what could he even say?  
  
“Thinking deep thoughts?” Israfil asked.  
  
“Only that it would cause a terrible scandal in the neighborhood, should word get out that I’d had a woman in my bedroom,” Aziraphale replied.  
  
He wasn’t sure she quite got the joke, but she politely laughed anyway.  
  
“You would rather we were gone, wouldn’t you?” she asked.  
  
“Well, I don’t wish to be rude,” he began. This time, her laughter was genuine.  
  
“So, you _really_ want us gone,” she concluded.  
  
“But I appreciate that you all have jobs to do, with this whole demonic incursion business,” Aziraphale agreed.  
  
“I’ll see what’s holding the technicians up. Once they’re through, there should be nothing left for us to do here. I’ll tell Gabe you need twenty-four hours to rest,” Israfil said, standing up. “By the way, you need twenty-four hours, at least, to rest. And I mean _rest_, Aziraphale. It doesn’t need to be sleep, per se-” here, she indicated the bed, “-but you should do something you find soothing. Read a good book. Listen to some pretty music. Watch a tell-lay-fish-son? Am I saying that correctly?”  
  
“Not even remotely,” Aziraphale replied, forcing a smile.  
  
The only thing that would be even vaguely restful would be to turn back time. Go back to being the person who had returned from doing a temptation in Peru with no more worries in his head than what kind of takeaway he should order, and bring Crowley back to being the person who he would tell all the particulars to over a shared bottle of pisco while he was at it.  
  
“Well, you know what I mean, right?” she asked.  
  
“I would rather like to get dressed,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“So, get dressed then,” she replied, one hand on the doorknob. “I’ll see what I can do about clearing out the others.”  
  
She left. Aziraphale stood, peeled off his socks, and deposited them, one after another, into the bin. Then he waited, hand braced on the corner of his dresser, as he listened to the argument end, and to the technicians file out of his house, and to the door close and stillness to descend upon his bookshop once more.  
  
He took a deep breath, and held it in. He counted his heartbeats- _one, two, three…_  
  
When he reached one thousand, and the stillness remained, he let the breath he’d been holding out, banished the trousers back into ether, and got dressed.  
  
When he went downstairs, his kitchen was empty of angels and weapons both. The only sign that they had been there was a steaming goblet left on his kitchen table, along with a note in Uriel’s luminous Hebrew calligraphy.  
  
_Here,_ they had written _I believe this is tea._  
  
It was mulled cider, actually, but it was hot, and he supposed that he appreciated the effort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Madame Jojo's was a very famous burlesque club that closed down in 2014. Supposedly, it was going to reopen last year, but that seems to have not happened.  
-I do love the lack of rigid interpretation there is as far as 'which religion is Canon' in Good Omens' fandom. Like, a lot. And it does make a lot of sense, because it's not like Heaven seems to have much of a clue what's going on there.


	4. Cry of the People Oppressed In Egypt, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, I've just finished the second segment of part four, and at 13K words we're two-thirds of the way there.

That was Tuesday.  
  
Or, rather, that was Tuesday morning. Though it was only half past ten by the time he was left alone again, Aziraphale decided that he might as well section that whole part of the day off on its own, and call it afternoon when he finished the cider and went back into the sitting room to survey the damage.  
  
There was quite a lot of it. Of course there was. The floorboards had great gaping gouges scraped out of them, and in some cases they’d been pried out of the floor entirely where the demons had melted upon them. The rug in front of the hearth was indeed torn, and there was no sign of the part that Sandalphon had ripped off- probably, it was still wrapped around the remains of Innahon’s spear and on its way to Heaven. The armchair had been pushed across the room and against one of the climate-controlled cabinets, which had indeed cracked under the pressure. Quite a lot more of his possessions were on the floor, and quite a few more of the breakables had broken.  
  
He sighed, removed his jacket, and rolled up his sleeves. “Steady on, old chap,” he told his reflection in the overturned silver tea tray.  
  
His first priority was the climate-controlled cabinet. He pushed the armchair clear of the cabinet, inspected the damage, and then fixed it with a wave of his hand.  
  
Almost immediately, there came a firm and insistent knocking on his door.

Aziraphale froze, and waited. When, after nearly a minute the knocking still refused to cease, he called out “I’ve just come back from holiday, I’m afraid we’re closed!”  
  
Miraculously, the door opened anyway. Aziraphale grabbed the nearest heavy object and crept to the doorway. He kept a mirror over the till, angled in such a way as to give him a good view of the whole of the sales floor. From here, he could see the front entrance where there was… one of the guards that had accompanied the Archangels.  
  
“Principality Aziraphale?” ey asked.  
  
“Yes?” Aziraphale replied, not moving so much as an inch.  
  
“Did you just perform a miracle?”  
  
“Yes?” Aziraphale said again. “Why? Did my privileges get curtailed?” He supposed that might have been a part of the twenty-four hours of rest Israfil had prescribed him, but if so, she’d certainly failed to mention it.  
  
“Not exactly,” ey said. “But we are trying to keep a close eye on any miraculous energy, especially before the guys from warding come through. It would be helpful if you would refrain from using any of your own. It clouds the reception otherwise.”  
  
“I see,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Well, uh. Good?” ey replied. After a moment, ey turned to leave.  
  
“Just out of curiosity,” Aziraphale called after em. “If I wished to leave the shop, would I be free to do so?”  
  
“Of course,” ey replied. “Just let us know so we can have someone tail you.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded. Still in the sitting room, the guard couldn’t see it.  
  
“Is that all, sir?” ey asked.  
  
“That’s all, thank you,” Aziraphale replied.  
  
The guard left, shutting the door behind em. Aziraphale dashed over to it, and made sure it was locked, and threw the deadbolt for good measure.

He wasn’t sure why he was so surprised. His hand curled into a fist and he pressed it against his mouth. No sense punching holes in anything when he wouldn’t be able to fix it. No sense in sobbing when there was work to be done. This was to be expected. As far as Heaven was concerned, this wasn’t his home. This was a field outpost which he maintained as their operative. Naturally, they would take steps to protect their assets. Of course.  
  
Right. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t need a project to keep himself busy with. The work would do him good. It would be something to focus on. He took a moment to collect himself, squared his shoulders, and returned to the sitting room.  
  
_That_ was Tuesday, as it happened. He spent the rest of the day putting the sitting back to rights, or at least as close to rights as he could set it. He was mentally cataloging as he went, and by the time the sun began to set, he was coming to the unfortunate conclusion that several of his belongings were missing.  
  
It was quite possible- highly probable, even!- that they had been taken because they’d been contaminated by demon’s blood. It was just also possible that they’d been taken just because one or more of the technicians had liked them and had had a case of the sticky fingers. It wasn’t like he could ask. He wasn’t supposed to care enough about material things to notice their absence.  
  
He really shouldn’t care. As an angel, he was meant to be above such things. Moreover, it would make him a bit of a hypocrite. He didn’t go around stealing himself, of course. That really would be a bridge too far. But quite a lot of the things Crowley had given him over the years had fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere at the intersection of _They’ll Never Even Miss This And If They Do They Can Afford It_ and _They Didn’t Deserve To Have This In The First Place_, he was well aware of that.  
  
An appalling number of things had even taken a detour through _I Am Reasonably Certain That You’re Giving Me This Stolen Nazi Loot Because You Know I’ll Eventually Give It Back To The Original Owners Or Their Inheritors, But I Don’t Want To Ask In Case You Get Defensive About It And Stop_, but thankfully he hadn’t had any of that in the shop at the time.  
  
The point was, he understood the urge to possess pretty things, despite also understanding that the urge itself was a little ridiculous. And he understood why no angel would ever dare ask him if they could have something of his, since that would imply that they both understood his attachment and wished to form one of their own. He was still missing a startling eighteen Regency-era snuffboxes, amongst other assorted belongings, and feeling a bit upset about it.  
  
And then, at a quarter to midnight, when he’d finally swept the last corner of the sitting room, rolled up the tattered rug, and checked under all the furniture, he had to face a series of three escalating and utterly horrifying facts:  
  
1\. Yes, one of the items he was missing was a book.  
2\. Yes, the book was one of Oscar Wilde’s.  
3\. Yes, the book was the 1912 edition of _The Soul of Man Under Socialism_ with introduction by Robert Ross.  
  
As with all the other belongings it had probably been taken because it had been contaminated, and even if it had been taken by one of the technicians personally, it had probably been taken because they’d liked the look of the black lettering on the red cover, rather than because they were looking to expand their horizons a little. He still couldn’t help but picture the look on Michael’s face as she cracked open the spine and attempted to wrap her mind around _that_ and ended up collapsing onto the settee in fit of uncontrollable giggles.  
  
It had been Wednesday for some minutes by the time he’d stopped. It had been that sort of day. It was going to be that sort of week, he rather expected.  
  
He sat up on the settee, and tilted his head up towards the ceiling. The grandfather clock, mercifully untouched, ticked away loudly in the room.

Twenty-four hours, Israfil had said. It had been more than twelve now, but without the cleaning to attend to, the remaining time stretched emptily before him.  
  
He could read, he supposed, but no sooner did the idea occur to him than he hit a mental wall. What could he read, now, that would not become tainted by association? What could he read, at all, that wouldn’t be more accurately described as staring blankly at the same page for hours on end?  
  
Eating was his next option, but as he was recently returned from Peru, he had nothing in the kitchen, not even cream for a cup a tea. No miracles, so no conjuring up anything. This was London, and there were places open, of course, but he didn’t relish the idea of being trailed by a guard and watched closely as he tried to eat. There were a few places that offered take away this late, but he really didn’t feel up to explaining take away to the angels guarding him, or to dealing with the potential for one of them to be a little trigger happy and attempt to smite the delivery man.  
  
So, that was a no on eating, then.  
  
He could drink. He very desperately wanted to drink, now that he thought about it. He did keep quite a selection of drinks, ranging from schnapps to absinthe. He could get really quite spectacularly drunk right now.  
  
But he also would neither be able to miracle himself sober, nor miracle away the hangover, and when these twenty-four hours were up, Gabriel would arrive and expect a report. He should probably work out what he was going to say.  
  
As an exercise to fill the time, it left him feeling a bit stymied. Gabriel was easiest to deal with when Aziraphale merely confirmed whatever facts he knew and whatever opinions he’d formed about them. He wasn’t looking to make things any more difficult than they already were. He’d told Gabriel all the facts he wished the Archangel to know, and hopefully whatever opinions he had formed about them weren’t too troublesome. He supposed he could expound upon what he gleaned about the troubles brewing between the fledgling Fujimori administration and people planning to strike in reaction to the new austerity policies, but he doubted Gabriel was interested in what was happening in Peru, given events here.  
  
There was the whole situation with Sandalphon, but- no. No, no, no, he could not afford to think about that, not now. It was better that he be surprised, still, by the entire idea.  
  
Little by little, his gaze had turned away from the ceiling, and he found that he was now looking directly as his armchair.  
  
He’d favored that armchair, ever since he’d bought in back in 1907. It was such a lush shade of red, and quite comfortable, the wingbacks large enough that he could sit in it and feel quite cocooned. They’d been through quite a lot, he and that armchair: two world wars, the Great Smog, the ongoing specter of nuclear war and the equally ongoing AIDS epidemic. Innahon had been sitting in it, when he’d gotten home. He’d been sitting on it for God only knew how long, Crowley bound and gagged at his feet, waiting for Aziraphale to arrive so he could make him become either a murderer or a rapist.  
  
It had been the first piece of furniture Crowley had draped himself onto, when they’d reconciled in 1941. Innahon had sat there and watched as Crowley had attempted to get away from Aziraphale. He’d sat in it in 1962, holed up with Crowley as they waited to see if the humans would end the world without any celestial oversight at all. Paltithael had leaned against it when she’d suggested that perhaps all that supernatural nudging he was doing was holding up his Fall, and perhaps he should bring himself to orgasm the ‘natural’ way. He’d toasted to the end of the Second World War in that armchair, and to the death of Stalin, and to sun setting on British Empire, and to the moon landing, and to perestroika. Amnoniel had clutched at the back of it when he’d laughed, because Aziraphale had made a loud grunt he’d found amusing. Aziraphale had cried in that armchair in 1967, after giving Crowley the thermos full of holy water he still feared would be the unmaking of him; and he’d fallen out of that armchair laughing a decade later, as Crowley had attempted to demonstrate his disco ‘moves’ for him. Kedesha had been sitting in it when she’d suggested that simultaneous orgasms might be the key to his Fall, and Innahon had obliged her with a wave of his hand.  
  
He’d patched up a lover of Crowley’s in that armchair once. Her name had been Raisel, it had been 1947, and she’d been injured during a tussle between the 43 Group and the Blackshirts. The side of her head had been bashed in, and the damage had been worse than any human medicine would have been able to handle, so Crowley had brought her to Aziraphale. He’d been honored, actually, to have been entrusted with her care. For all Crowley had spat about fraternizing, there had been precious few people in his life who he’d actually cared for- not that he’d been a _he_ at the time. Or _she_ in the strictest sense- not wholly, at least. But these things often required imprecise translating and what might have once been somewhat more accurately called aylonit had come across in 1940s England as a rather butch woman, who, it must be said, had looked quite fetching in her braces and rolled up shirtsleeves. _She_ would do, particularly in mixed company, even if said company was quite a bit closer to death than anyone should have liked. Aziraphale had healed the damage well enough, leaving behind for the sake plausible deniability a gash that needed stitches and would leave behind a dashing scar. She’d come to, slurred out a question half in Yiddish Aziraphale hadn’t quite been able to parse, and still been groggy enough not to notice when Crowley had miracled the blood off of the armchair while assuring her that, yes, the other fellow had gotten much worse and deserved it too.  
  
Aziraphale had been sat in that armchair, as Crowley had been made to kneel between his legs and had told him in a voice ragged with pain that none of it was his fault. No miracle would ever be able to take that away.  
  
Twenty-four hours. It hadn’t been so long ago, had it? Twenty-four hours ago had still been the middle of it. Their clothing had started to have been torn off. The angels had started to dictate positions, and who came when.  
  
Aziraphale wrenched his eyes from the armchair and buried his face in his hands. The grandfather clock struck one.  
  
There was no way around it: the armchair was going to have to go. The floorboards too: he could miracle them whole, presumably, once the warding had been finished and the guard lifted, but the residual energy signature from the miracle would always be there, and always remind him of what had happened. It would be better to just get the whole floor redone in the human fashion. The rug was a lost cause as well, though he wasn’t sure whether to toss the thing and be rid of it, or miracle it whole and pass it along with the chair to some human who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.  
  
Not that he could take care of that now. No, there was nothing to be done about it now. There was nothing he could do now.  
  
Well, he could throw something over the armchair. He probably should, if it was going to affect him so strongly. And the scrolls! He doubted very much if they’d suffered any damage in the scant hours their cabinet had been cracked, but he had better check, just to be sure.  
  
He rose, carefully averting his eyes from the chair as he went to get a sheet from the linen closet upstairs. In a little over nine hours, Gabriel would arrive.

* * *

He’d first learned the art of scroll preservation and restoration in the Library of Alexandria, where, not incidentally, many of the scrolls in his collection had come from. There had been no such thing as climate control then, and with the perpetual salt and humidity of the sea right at their door they’d had little recourse but to put a lot of effort into keeping the works in their care legible and intact.  
  
Of course, then Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, also called Ptolemy Physcon, had come into power. There had been a purge of intellectuals such as would have made Stalin blush, and money no longer flowed into the Library’s coffers. Aziraphale, who did not need money, or technically anything that might be bought with money, had done his best, but it had been made plain to Aziraphale that Heaven did not consider the preservation of the Library to be a wise use of his abilities. He’d kept at it as best he could, but without miracles it was a matter of one person trying to do the work of scores of people. By the time Caesar had come around, the place was in an abysmal state. He'd known it was time to cut his losses and run with what he could carry.  
  
It had been a long time since he’d done this sort of work entirely sans miracles, but he remembered it easily enough: the smell of old papyrus mingling with newly cut stock, the feel of ragged ends of strips which needed replacing catching against his fingertips, the drag of a sable brush against the pith… there were more modern methods now, ones which would preserve the papyrus itself, not merely the words, but these weren’t scrolls meant for anyone but himself: their provenance could never be proven, and even if it could, it would never be believed. So he maintained them as he’d always maintained them.  
  
The work was soothing, and he let himself get lost in it. The chiming of the grandfather clock didn’t register, nor did the rising of the sun. It was only when Gabriel had been knocking on his kitchen door for some seconds that he realized that his twenty-four hours rest was up.  
  
“I’ll be with you in moment!” he called out. Thankfully, he wasn’t too deep into the guts of this particular scroll, and it really was the work of a moment to put it away before going to the door. Gabriel, contrary to his usual way, stayed outside until Aziraphale opened the door for him, and then kept a polite distance from him instead of starting in with the fake back slapping routine he seemed to think made him personable.  
  
That was how he knew. Israfil had told him- the whole _your corporation was violated in ways which mimicked the act of sexual intercourse_ bit. That was also to be expected. Heaven had never quite gotten the hang of doctor-patient confidentiality, particularly when it came to things like ones’ superiors. Aziraphale resolved to ignore it for as long as he was able.  
  
“You need to debrief me?” he prompted, when Gabriel didn’t say anything.  
  
“Yes,” Gabriel said, too loudly. “Yes, I do. Let’s sit down, you look- uh.”  
  
Aziraphale was suddenly acutely aware that, despite rolling up his sleeves to avoid such a happening, he’d gotten ink on both his cuffs.  
  
“As I said, it’s going to take me the rest of the week to get this place human-presentable as it is,” Aziraphale told him. He didn't need to know that ink wasn't involved in any part of that process. “I didn’t think I should be wasting time. Speaking of, do you have any idea when the warding will be finished?”  
  
“Not long, maybe a day or two,” Gabriel said, not quite meeting his eyes. “Don’t worry, we’ve got eyes on you until they’re ready to give the place a good going-over.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, which seemed a safer response than anything he might say to that. They sat down at the kitchen table. The bottle of pisco was still there. Aziraphale wished he’d remembered to put it away.  
  
“Did you like the tea?” Gabriel asked.  
  
It took Aziraphale a moment to remember what he was talking about. “Oh, yes! It was… quite fortifying, please thank Uriel for me.”  
  
“Great! That’s good to hear,” Gabriel said, smiling broadly at a point somewhere behind Aziraphale left shoulder. And then, seemingly unable to find a suitable segue, he said “Let’s start by establishing a timeline.”  
  
Simple enough. He’d left on the 9th, taking a flight to Peru (travel expenditure form as yet to be filed). There he stayed, thwarting wiles, until it became obvious that the demon Crowley was not in Peru himself. He’d gotten a flight home, and returned to the bookshop on the 20th at about four in the afternoon to find an ambush waiting for him. He’d been taken hostage, and held hostage, until shortly before eight in morning of the 21st, when an altercation between the demons gave him the chance to run for the kitchen, make a vat of holy water, and use it to end them. After a few moments to collect himself, he’d called Heaven, and that had been that.  
  
He sincerely hoped that Gabriel didn’t need to hear any details about being held hostage. He wasn’t sure he was prepared to think of them, much less come up with a convincing lie about them.  
  
He was even less prepared for Gabriel to ask “And what about before you went to Peru?”, though that was a less painful question to answer.  
  
“What about it?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“What’s the timeline on that?” Gabriel asked.  
  
_Roughly six thousand years,_ Aziraphale wanted to say, but Gabriel would not have understood the joke. “How far back do you want me to go?” he asked instead.  
  
“When did you start hearing that the demon Crowley might be heading to Peru?” Gabriel asked.  
  
“Oh, well. Rumors started reaching me- oh, a week or so before I left? Perhaps a bit before- towards the end of July, I should think,” Aziraphale said.  
  
It had been the end of July- the 29th, specifically. They’d bumped into one another, as tended to happen when two people lived scarcely a mile apart and made no particular effort to avoid one another. They’d talked for a few moments, but Crowley had been on his way to a meeting with Dagon, so the conversation sans pleasantries had largely consisted of the demon complaining that he was undoubtably going to be sent somewhere abroad just as the weather was getting comfortable. More seriously, there was trouble brewing in the Persian Gulf, and he’d rather been afraid that he would be sent down there to make it worse.  
  
It wasn’t a sure thing, Aziraphale had pointed out to him. Who could say? Maybe they would be sending him somewhere nice- or at least nicer than what might very well soon be a war zone. _He_ certainly hadn’t been out of the country in a while, and it might be nice to be see somewhere new for a time. Crowley had laughed at him, and told him to be careful what he wished for, as he still owed the demon one from January, as per the Arrangement.  
  
“A few days later, more concrete signs began appearing. The demon Crowley specializes in sowing mass chaos- when he’s about to embark on something a bit more focused, he tends to stir up a lot of minor annoyances first as a sort of smoke screen. I read the signs and started digging.”  
  
The expected call had come the night of August the 2nd, and they’d met the following morning at St. James’ park to feed the ducks and go over things. Crowley had indeed received orders to go abroad. Thankfully, considering the invasion of the previous day, the assignment had not been in the Persian Gulf. Rather, he was to be sent to Peru. Aziraphale had never been to Peru, and knew almost nothing about it. There were rainforests, probably? Incans, at some point. Alpacas were in Peru, and they made some very fine wool. At any rate, it was a Spanish-speaking country, and seeing as Crowley had refused to update his Spanish since the Inquisition, it had only made sense for Aziraphale to go instead.  
  
“He has a few usual haunts- places he goes and feels comfortable. I had a poke around, and he’d mentioned leaving to a few people. Amongst other things, he’d said that he fancied the weather in Lima, so I booked a seat on a flight and went after him.”  
  
They’d met for dinner, before Aziraphale had left for Heathrow. Ostensibly, this had been to go over the details and discuss any last minute changes that might have come up, but they’d barely touched upon the pretense they had to justify spending time in one another’s company. The closest they’d come was when Aziraphale asked if there was anything Crowley wanted him to keep an eye out for, and Crowley had asked him to see if he couldn’t get a bottle of whatever it was that people drank in Peru.  
  
He’d asked, and apparently pisco was the national drink of Peru. The bottle was on the table between himself and Gabriel as he gave his false report right now, as it happened.  
  
“You wouldn’t have gone to a place called Elena's L’Etoile, would you?” He mangled the pronunciation so badly that Aziraphale nearly said no before he fully considered Gabriel’s question.  
  
He’d had that dinner with Crowley at Elena's L’Etoile. They often did. The restaurant had been there, just a few minutes’ walk from the bookshop, for nearly a hundred years, and Aziraphale did so love French food, even when done through a very English lens.  
  
If Gabriel was asking about that, then that meant that they’d been seen.  
  
“Yes- though that was after I’d booked the flight,” Aziraphale replied. It wouldn’t do to let his nerves show, not now. Not until he knew for certain what it was that Gabriel knew, and what he wanted to do with that information. “It’s one of the demon’s more usual haunts- he often lays curses on people there. I figured I would check and make sure there weren’t any lingering malevolent influences before popping off. Why?”  
  
“According to Sandalphon, his guy saw the two of you there together,” Gabriel said. “You, and the demon Crowley.”  
  
“What?” Aziraphale said, his stomach plummeting. “Well, that’s not right.”  
  
“Apparently his guy was sure.”  
  
“His ‘guy’ Fell and ended up a pool of toxic sludge on my sitting room floor, which has since been scraped up and carted back to Heaven,” Aziraphale scoffed.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, there is that,” Gabriel said. He still wouldn’t look at Aziraphale.  
  
He was no longer sure if that was because Israfil had filled him in, or if there was something else at play here. What if they had taken Innahon at his word, and considered that proof enough to try him? What if Gabriel was only here to keep Aziraphale distracted? What if-  
  
He cut himself off. He didn’t know, yet, what Heaven’s view of the matter was. Besides, this was Gabriel. If he’d caught Aziraphale doing something terrible, there wouldn’t be this hesitancy, this discomfort. He’d gloat. Surely, he would be gloating right now, if Aziraphale had truly been found out.  
  
“Do we know when they Fell?” Aziraphale asked. “Depending on how they kept contact, it’s not impossible that Innahon might have been passing on false information to Sandalphon on Hell’s behalf.”  
  
Gabriel still was not looking directly at him, but Aziraphale could read his expression plainly: he hadn’t considered that possibility, and wasn’t sure if it could be discounted out of hand.  
  
“Of course, even if you take things on their face- namely, that Innahon and his attendants Fell sometime between their last report and showing up to ambush me, and were completely honest with Sandalphon before that point- that does paint a rather distressing picture,”  
  
“Of you having dinner with a demon?” Gabriel asked incredulously.  
  
“No. Or well, yes, I suppose that would be distressing.” For Gabriel, that is: for Aziraphale, that sounded like an excellent night out on the town and an even better night in. “But I was thinking of what Sandalphon said yesterday- that the demon Crowley never left London. I was quite sure that he had, and that he’d left London before I went to Elena's L’Etoile. I couldn’t sense him anywhere. Not even the cashbox, which is normally a favored target of his.” By which he meant that Crowley was an uncommonly generous tipper. “If he’s changed up his appearance and the method by which he’s cloaking his presence again, he might very well have slipped by me that way. He might very well have come to Elena's L’Etoile to see me off, as it were.” Aziraphale twisted the signet ring on his finger. “Goodness, but that will make things difficult. He is a tricky one, that demon Crowley.”  
  
“Yeah, about that,” Gabriel said.  
  
“Well, what about it?” Aziraphale asked when he didn’t elaborate. He tried not to snap, but didn’t quite manage it. That, at long last, provoked Gabriel into making eye contact with him again.  
  
“Look, are you sure you’re up to this? Because Israfil isn’t,” Gabriel told him. “And I can kind of see her point. You’ve been down here six thousand years, and this was-” And there went the eye contact again. “-damaging.”  
  
“Israfil has thousands of years' worth of medical experience, and I wouldn’t dream of contradicting that,” Aziraphale said, as calmly as he could. “But I had a near-equal number of years worth of experience with dealing with the demon Crowley, and I think I know myself pretty well too. It’s in the best interests of all involved that I carry on with my work.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
It’s not like there was a bearable alternative. “Quite sure. And you may tell Israfil not to worry, I’m not going to be confronting the demon Crowley any time soon. I doubt I could. He must have expected to hear back from Innahon by now- he must know that it’s gone wrong. He’ll have gone to ground.”  
  
“But you think you’ll be up to confronting him again?” Gabriel asked.

Aziraphale smiled. “If I’m not back to dogging his footsteps within the year, I shall be very put out with myself.” Friday. If he could just be rid of the Heavenly escort before then, he would see Crowley again on Friday.  
  
Gabriel nodded. An awkward silence befell the kitchen.  
  
“Was there anything else you needed to know, or..?” Aziraphale asked, when he could bear the silence no longer.  
  
“Oh, no. No. I think we’re done here,” Gabriel said, standing up. “Just get us that report on the Peruvian situation when you can.”  
  
“Will do,” Aziraphale replied.  
  
Gabriel left. Aziraphale waited until the grandfather clock chimed a quarter past, and then when Gabriel- or any other angel, for that matter- failed to return, he stood.  
  
He made sure the kitchen door was locked, and then went straight for his liquor cabinet. Today was a _spectacular_ day to get drunk before noon, and he had forty-five minutes left in which to manage it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I knew I wanted Aziraphale to be missing a book, and I knew I wanted it to be a Wilde for angst value. So, weirdly, I picked _The Soul of Man Under Socialism_ because I can't think of a more hilarious book to be stolen by angels from a society that had, as the good tumblr post said, collectively decided that their gender was capitalism. (The essay, among other things, describes Wilde's view of Jesus of Nazareth being the archetypal individualist.) The edition Aziraphale is missing is real, and also real pricey.  
-Blackshirts were/are the nickname for British fascists, particularly back in the days of Oswald Mosley. The 43 Group was a Jewish-lead group of anti-fascist formed after WWII who would often violently disrupt their meetings in an effort to not have Nazis in the neighborhood.  
-Aylonit was one of the six genders of [Old Israel](http://www.sojourngsd.org/blog/sixgenders). I imagine, for fanfic purposes, that it was based on the celestial construction of gender, but given the whole preoccupation with being fruitful and multiplying it got a very biological determinism lens thrown over it that just doesn't exist for angels and demons.  
-As far as I can tell from my google scholarship, yes, replacing strips of papyrus before they could decay entirely was part of how scrolls were preserved at the Library of Alexandria.  
-Elena's L'Etoile was a French restaurant in Soho that opened in 1896, and closed down in 2013 (side note: I did not realize until doing research for this fic how completely gentrified Soho had gotten over my lifetime).


	5. Cry of the People Oppressed In Egypt, Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, Part Four is officially finished. I'm going to go over it with a comb tomorrow and then spam the meme with all 22K+ words of it by this time next evening.

“Do you think we have a drinking problem?” Crowley had asked him once.  
  
The question had struck him as odd, not in the least because they were, at the time, quite deep into their cups.  
  
“I don’t think we can,” Aziraphale had replied. He was pretty sure it was true. While they’d both noticed by now that their bodies could develop certain tolerances, they never quite seemed to develop any dependencies that couldn’t be nullified with a thought.  
  
“I don’t mean we, personally, us, I mean.” Crowley had waved his hand around the room. “I mean them. The people we live with. England. Do think there’s a drinking problem?”  
  
It hadn’t been the first time Crowley had unthinkingly lumped them in with humanity. Aziraphale had learned not to mention it.  
  
“I think some people do,” Aziraphale had replied, and Crowley had groaned.  
  
“No, no. That’s not an answer.”  
  
“Isn’t it?” Aziraphale had asked. “I feel like if there’s a problem in England it’s the poverty.”  
  
“Oh come on. That’s not even your opinion, it’s Dickens’,” Crowley had grumbled.  
  
“Well Charles is right, about some things! He’s especially right about that.”  
  
This had been some time in 1851, just after the Great Exhibition. They’d had a great deal to do during the 1850s, and saw one another quite frequently. There were seances Crowley had taken to making a tad too realistic and Aziraphale had taken to attending just to rein him in, there was Dickens and Hawthorne and Melville, and an incredible number of new dining halls and theatrical productions to attend. More seriously, there was the Crimean War, the United States hurtling closer to their Civil War, that dreadful cholera outbreak right in Aziraphale’s neighborhood, Darwin publishing his _Origin of Species_, the dissolution of the Mughal Empire and a boggling number of conflicts in China. They were, in a word, swamped.  
  
What had been concerning Crowley that evening was, for some reason, the temperance movement, which had begun to reach something of a fever pitch at that point. The demon been supposed to try and nip it in the bud, back in the day, and he’d failed because, as he’d put it _Show me a less corruptible demographic than an elderly Scottish lesbian spending her twilight years funding her nephew’s crusade against alcohol and I’ll show you the second coming of Christ._  
  
Aziraphale didn’t think much of it, really. He supposed he probably should, as an agent of Heaven meant to protect people from the temptation to sin, but frankly he would rather that the preachers pushed for moderation rather that teetotaling. Not that his opinion had stopped him from purchasing a very finely-made edition of Cruikshank’s _The Bottle_ when it had come out four years ago, but that was a collectible item, not something with a message he wished to proliferate.  
  
“It’s just- the thing is. It’s the hitting. The wife beating. That. I don’t like it,” Crowley had said.  
  
The temperance movement had come in a lot of different forms, of which Christian abstinence from worldly temptations was but one. Some of the Chartists had been on board because teetotaling was respectable, and respectability proved the working class’ worthiness to vote. And many a woman’s group was on board because they saw a link between drinking and domestic violence.  
  
“Who does like it?” Aziraphale had asked.  
  
“Dunno. Men, presumably,” Crowley had replied. “Ones that hit people and then laugh about it at the pub, at least.”  
  
Aziraphale’s face had wrinkled in distaste. “Oh, well. A pox on those people.”  
  
“No one says that,” Crowley had groaned. “Come on! No one says that anymore.”  
  
Aziraphale had ignored him. “It just doesn’t sound like a gin problem. It sounds like a _them_ problem,” he’d said thoughtfully. “Drinking- you don’t drink and suddenly want to punch people. You drink and perhaps forget why you shouldn’t punch people, I guess, but it doesn’t implant the urge to punch.”  
  
Actually, he was of the opinion that “demon drink” was a good name for alcohol, though not for any of the reasons those in the temperance movement called it such. The Arrangement was centuries old by that point, and he’d known Crowley for far longer, and so he could speak with some authority as to the nature of demonic wiles. They worked as an inducement, not a compulsion. It was the same with alcohol- it didn’t create compulsions towards any sort of behavior, it merely lowered any inhibitions you might have against indulging in such behaviors.  
  
Take Aziraphale’s behavior that night, for example: they had sat pressed together in the back of the shop, thigh to thigh, faintly burning with the contact through the fashionable layers they wore. Crowley had taken his glasses off, and Aziraphale had been watching his face avidly, storing away the memories of his oddly bare-seeming face for later.  
  
“I think it might be different for them, though,” Crowley had said thoughtfully. “Can’t miracle themselves sober, can’t prevent the cravings.”  
  
“Oh, that’s certainly true.”  
  
Crowley had held out his glass, and Aziraphale had topped him off.  
  
“Is there anyone in particular you’re worried about, dear?” he’d asked. "Someone you want me to check on, do a little Heavenly intervening with?”  
  
Crowley had snorted bitterly. “There’s too many, angel. It’s a problem.”  
  
“Is there a particular area? Maybe I can do a general blessing, or-”  
  
“It’s everywhere, angel,” Crowley had groaned. “Everywhere.”  
  
“It’s alright, my dear,” Aziraphale said, putting a consoling arm around his shoulder. “They tend to sort themselves out better than we ever could. And if you can think of anything I might do to help, anything at all, all you have to do is but ask.”  
  
Drinking brought out the demon in some husbands- _demon_ in the sense of the boorish and violent coworkers Crowley often complained about. In Aziraphale, it brought out the part of him that wanted to be a husband to one demon in particular.  
  
He rather thought he’d make a good husband. He wanted to be, for Crowley. He wanted to bake him scones in the morning when he felt like eating breakfast, he wanted to unplait his hair and help him brush it through at night when it was long, he wanted to be able to come up behind him, put his arms around him, kiss the back of his neck and ask him how his day had been. He wanted to do all the myriad little intimacies he’d watched humans do for the ones they loved over the years, and he wanted to do them with Crowley.  
  
Of course, it was all very context-dependent. Normally when Aziraphale drank enough to get drunk, he was drinking with Crowley; drinking on one’s own was an entirely differently- and entirely more morose- kettle of fish.  
  
Was there such a thing as a morose kettle of fish? Was there an unmorose kettle of fish, come to think of it? He can’t imagine that there was ever a fish that ended up in a kettle and wasn’t morose about it. He would be quite morose to put the kettle on for a spot of tea and discover it had fish in it.  
  
Actually, no, morose wasn’t the right word at all. Peeved. He’d be quite peeved to find fish in his tea kettle.  
  
He was a bit peeved right now. It was rather later than noon- three hours past, or so the grandfather clock had so helpfully informed him, not so long ago. The sun was still streaming through his windows. It was August- it would be some time before the sun went down. Five hours of time, at least.  
  
He was a bit peeved, and quite drunk, and he was also alone. No Crowley- just the thought of him. The worry for him. He had to be having an easier time of it with his side than Aziraphale was having, hadn’t he? It generally seemed like he did, at least when it came to talking himself out of trouble.

It wasn’t just the casual indifference of Heaven, that smarted, or even their clumsy attempts at care that he could never tell them weren’t appreciated or even helpful. They’d _caused_ this. Innahon had been a Principality when he’d come into the shop, an agent of Heaven, and an angel of the Lord just as Aziraphale was.  
  
He’d had orders. They’d come from Sandalphon.  
  
There were three explanations for this.  
  
The first was the one he’d assumed when he’d walked into his sitting room Monday evening and found Innahon sitting with Crowley: that he’d been under investigation, and found out. Four angels were enough for a tribunal, and if imbued with the right authority, a tribunal could pass a sentence, one of which was to Fall. The methods by which an angel Fell were… obscure, to say the least. The official line was that you had to renounce God, and once removed from Her light, Her light would be removed from you. The more common belief was that you could Fall simply by doing the wrong thing- something so vile that it constituted a removal from Her light just a surely as a renunciation did. That certainly accounted for the Fall of Innahon and his attendants, though why they Fell and Aziraphale did not he still didn’t quite understand. They’d thought they were acting in Her name, after all: Aziraphale had just wanted to save Crowley’s life.  
  
There was a third possible method, of course, a rumor whispered in every corner where angels had ever congregated: that you could be forced to Fall, without making any kind of decision at all. Michael, it was said, had that ability. It was said that she’d used it to end the War in Heaven.  
  
Michael would have also undoubtably been told if he was under investigation for a Falling offense, and she’d seemed as taken aback by the charge as the rest of them, so explanation number one no longer seemed likely.  
  
The second explanation was that Sandalphon had been having him investigated off the books out of a personal vendetta. It wasn’t as unlikely as it sounded, on the face of things. The mechanism would be easy enough to manage, presuming Innahon had already had cause to be on Earth- and for all Gabriel’s insinuations, Aziraphale knew that Sandalphon still had quite a lot of work to on Earth. Lord knew, Aziraphale had done more than a few personal favors for Gabriel in his time. He had to assume it would have been no less familiar a request to Innahon. Sandalphon could always have played it off afterwards as a horrifying truth his team had stumbled across. Aziraphale didn’t have the best reputation in Heaven, he knew: it would be believed quite easily, that he’d Fallen. Quite a few people probably expected him to Fall. On many days, Aziraphale counted himself amongst their numbers.  
  
And, of course, Aziraphale had recently given him cause. He was under Gabriel’s command, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to be seconded out to someone else’s command, and it wasn’t uncommon for the Archangels to trade off on administrative duties, including things like reprimands, commendations, cautions, and performance reviews.  
  
As someone on the underling end of things, Aziraphale found that this system had its good points and its bad ones. He preferred knowing what to expected when he walked into the office, but as the millennia marched on he’d gotten to know the four Archangels who most often commanded him well enough that it was mostly a non-issue, past that first stab of annoyance that happened when he opened the door expecting Gabriel and finding someone else.  
  
Gabriel liked things to be clear-cut: in this, he and Aziraphale were alike. Unfortunately, they often disagreed on the cut, and that could lead to problems. He was self-important, though, and Aziraphale’s status as the longest-running agent here on Earth lent him a fair bit of prestige. It meant that, if he was careful and willing to put up with a great deal of condescension, he could occasionally pick a battle to win with him.  
  
Michael was cold and she was ruthless, but she wasn’t rigid like Gabriel was. She cared about _results_. So long as Aziraphale delivered- and, so far as the paperwork he sent on the Heaven was concerned, he delivered quite regularly- she wasn’t going to raise issue with any of his methods.  
  
Uriel had quite a few qualities which Aziraphale liked- he quite envied them their perpetual calm, for example- but most of those qualities were blunted by their position. They cared, they truly did, but they didn’t always _understand_, and it was no use trying to explain where they’d gone wrong, whether the problem was one Aziraphale himself couldn't quite articulate, or if it was a simple matter of fact like _mulled cider is not the same thing as tea_.  
  
Sandalphon was the worst of the lot, in Aziraphale’s opinion. It had always struck him as ironic, that the Archangel who had started out life as a human would be the most rigid and aloof of them all. Where was the man who had saved the widow of Zarephath and her son, whose devotion to doing good persuaded Her to reveal Herself not in punishment, but in the lifting of the drought?  
  
Aziraphale had brought him food and water, during his exile. He’d been in Heaven to receive him, when he’d ascended on that chariot. He’d been pleased. He’d thought that the terrible doubt and despair Elijah had shown in that cave had been purged, and now he would be able to understand, as deeply as the rest of them, that there was a point to it all.  
  
He’d been sort of right, even though he hadn’t anticipated the effects that certainty would have. Sandalphon did not doubt, and he did not despair, and he absolutely _thought_ he knew the point of it all, right down to the smallest detail. He was quite the stickler, and when one bent and occasionally flat-out broke as many rules as Aziraphale did, that was a problematic quality in a boss.  
  
Aziraphale had strict rules about his meetings with Sandalphon. He was to stay polite, and to stay calm, and not to challenge any point the Archangel raised with him, and should that fail to mitigate things, he was not to strike back. He was to take his lumps like big angel and make it back to Earth as quickly as Sandalphon allowed.  
  
His last performance review, just six years ago, had been with Sandalphon, and during it he had broken every rule but that last. Just barely.  
  
Sandalphon had taken issue with his work with those suffering from, as Sandalphon had put it “that vulgar disease”. Aziraphale had disagreed, politely at first, and then vehemently, and then he’d lost his temper. It was just- he was used to hearing those arguments, from humans. And he was used to biting his tongue, and he was used to telling himself there was nothing he could do, because there wasn’t. He couldn’t change anyone’s minds. He couldn’t change anyone’s beliefs. He could, at best, amplify whatever doubts they might have about them- though, of course, that was meant to be Crowley’s job, and Evil as well.  
  
He hadn’t been on Earth at the time, though, and long story short when Gabriel had walked in on them Aziraphale’s eye had been swelling, there had been blood dripping from his mouth, and he’d just spat a gob of it back into Sandalphon’s face.  
  
It could have gone rather badly, if someone else had walked in. But Gabriel liked things to be clear cut, and in this instance, he made it clear that he was cutting it in Aziraphale’s favor. Everyone knew that Sandalphon got rather more hands on than was currently the code, but very few people knew the details. In this particular instance, Aziraphale had been in the right with his arguments. He had, over the years, created an absolutely _beautiful_ trail of paperwork, providing himself with precedent to continue on as he had, and in hindsight, had he only kept his head he probably could have used it to justify filing for an appeal.

He hadn’t kept his head, not at all, but he had been in the right, and Gabriel had offered to sweep it all under the rug as a favor, one Archangel to another, and then proceeded to do just that. He’d signed off on all of Aziraphale’s activities without comment too, an uncommonly generous gesture that he’d clearly only done because it annoyed Sandalphon.  
  
He hadn’t gotten off scot-free, of course. A nice big black mark on his record for insubordination, some mandatory mediation sessions with Sandalphon, a temporary suspension of his privileges to perform certain major miracles without prior authorization. It could have been much, much worse, and Sandalphon had clearly wanted it to be.  
  
So yes, option two was very viable. This could be a personal vendetta.  
  
And then there was option three: that it wasn’t a vendetta against Aziraphale, but rather a vendetta against _Gabriel_. It was an absolutely intolerable thought: that he could have- that he might have- that he did- that he _had_…  
  
He’d raped Crowley. He’d forced himself, repeatedly, onto the person he loved more than anything in this world or the next, and to know that it all might have been some collateral damage from the Archangels’ infighting galled. It was absolutely _sickening_, and he could not get it out of his head.  
  
His thoughts chased themselves uselessly around and around his head, until, distantly he became aware of the clock chiming six. Awareness was distant because he was on the verge of passing out. It was time to sober up. Past time, really.  
  
He fumbled the miracle with a groan, all the alcohol reappearing in the bottles he’d drunk it from, but undifferentiated, mixed together to create several liters of what was bound to be an absolutely vile concoction.  
  
There was a pounding on the door. Fuck. He’d forgotten.  
  
“Yes, yes, that was me!” he called out. “Sorry! It was a reflex.”  
  
Thankfully, that seemed to be good enough for guard. He would have had no way of explaining himself, had they come inside and seen him in such a state.  
  
He glared at the nearest bottle blearily, not quite sober but certainly much closer than he had been a few moments ago. He should, he knew, pour the whole lot of it down the drain.  
  
…then again, it had already been in him, so what harm could it do to have another go?

* * *

“I don’t know why I didn’t Fall. I realize I keep saying that, especially to You, but I really. I really just don’t know!”

It was night, and he was very drunk but pacing himself this time, and he was praying.

“I’ve been expecting it for so long, I’ve felt it hanging over me like that sword I gave away so long ago- and I am sorry for that. Not for giving it away exactly- they’ve done, I like to think, slightly more good with fire than ill- but for lying about it. To You- and well. Everyone. Everyone but Crowley, I’ve lied to about it, I think. I know I’ve said it before, but it seems like the sort of thing You might like hearing again? So, I’m sorry.”

Like most angels, Aziraphale could pray in a way which was both more formal and more efficient than humans could, by which he meant that he could expect a response from either his superior officers, or even the Metatron directly, if it was a dire enough prayer. But those were prayers for things that were above the board, things that Heaven would approve of, or at least approve of being told.

“I just- I don’t understand. I’ve doubted, I’ve loved the wrong people in the wrong ways, and I’ve done so, so much worse. So _much_ worse.”

The logic went like this: God was everywhere and knew everything. Therefore She already knew every part of it: She knew that Aziraphale had entered into an Arrangement with Crowley and did the devil’s work occasionally as a part of it, She knew that Aziraphale had fallen so, so awfully in love with Crowley, and She also knew that he’d raped him.

“I hurt him. I hurt him so, so terribly, and I did it to Fall. I didn’t- I didn’t just think it was bad enough to cause me to Fall, I did it intending to Fall because of it, because- because I found the idea of Falling- of Falling for rape, no less- to be more agreeable than I did the idea of killing Crowley.”

Therefore he did no harm by just tilting his head back and letting the words flow out of his mouth. She knew everything he could possibly say already, and best of all, there was no need to get Heaven involved in any of it. The Metatron was a terrible gossip, everyone knew that, and if the Archangels ever found out…

“I chose my love for him over my love for You. I didn’t- I didn’t think that was forgivable.”

Crowley prayed like this, at least once that Aziraphale had seen, and probably more. Aziraphale wasn’t supposed to know that- Crowley hadn’t ever told him, and Aziraphale had never told him that he’d been seen praying. But he'd seen in all the same, and now he knew. It had been quick, and not particularly graceful or even grateful. But it had been _there_, after the Great Fire of London, and it had been one of the most profound moments Aziraphale had ever borne witness to. It rather felt like the world had spun on a slightly different tilt after that.

“Thank You, by the way. I don’t think I would do much good as a demon- or, well. I mean, obviously I wouldn’t do much good as a demon, demons aren’t really _for_ doing good, but. Crowley does do good. He does. He is so good, especially to me. One of the best people I know, really. Oh, but he has to walk such a fine line to do it… I don’t think I could do it. I don’t think I have that in me.”

His gaze fell on the armchair again. With the sheet covering it, it didn’t suck him in like it had last night, but it still made it hard to forget. Hard not to _remember_, and not only the events of last night. It was everything too, the whole mental pit spewing six thousand years’ worth of censored thoughts and emotions and memories around in his brain, some of it even falling, unfiltered, from his mouth: _Reasons I Am In Love With The Demon Crowley_, _Things I Would Have Nightmares About If I Slept_, and- and the other one. The worst one.

“They Fell when they touched him. I mean- they’d obviously kidnapped him and brought him here, I presume there was touching involved in that, but the rape, I mean. When they physically laid hands on him in order for him to be raped, they all Fell, whether they were touching him or not.”

All four of them at once, and with all four of them close enough together for Aziraphale to dispose of them with one great big splash.

“Should I hope? That it means that You care for him too? That he’s not beyond Your love, even though he Fell? Should I fear it? I’m afraid already.”

_And That’s Why I Have Lost All Faith In Heaven_.

“I don’t think he would make a better angel than I would a demon. Different management styles, You know. You must know. I couldn’t deal with his people for very long, and he couldn’t deal with mine, and we can barely stand our own as it is. We’re just used to how our offices work, that’s all.”

That was the third category of things he threw into his mental put of _Not Thinking About It_. It was the reason he tried not to even label anything. It was the most dangerous part of him. He parroted the official line, and he filled out his paperwork and he made all the necessary noises to the rest of the Host and it was all lies. He had no faith in Heaven.

And She knew. She had to know, all of it. And still, he was an angel. He hadn’t Fallen.

Of course, Sandalphon was still an Archangel and his boss to boot, so he wasn’t about to get too big a head about it. Only God knew what it all meant, really, and he was okay with Her not sharing.

He had to be, and She had to know that, too.

“I just. I wish I knew he was all right. That he wasn’t suffering.”

Best case scenario: Crowley was fine, probably home alone, threatening his plants with a paring knife. Worst case scenario: he was in Hell, being called in to account for the fact that he’d failed to deliver four newly-Fallen demons into their ranks.

Aziraphale shuddered.

“He loves me, You know. It’s- it’s a really lovely feeling. Like a sunbeam falling on me in just the right way to warm the back of my head and illuminate the page I’m reading so I don’t have to get up and turn on a lamp, only I know, I can tell, that the sun is shinning because of _me_.”

This was not the happy declaration Aziraphale wished it could be.

“He loves me, and I love him, and I can’t even admit we’re _friends_. Innahon- he didn’t know, that it was love, or friendship. He didn’t even know about the Arrangement, I don’t think- or at least, he didn’t know that it was an ongoing thing. From the sound of things, he just saw us at dinner together. He might have seen us in the park. I don’t think it could have been more than that. We’d barely spoken more than a few minutes here and there otherwise, not for months.”

And still, the shape of Aziraphale’s desires had been so obvious that Innahon had made a weapon of them. How much worse would it have been, had it been something open and acknowledged between them- something they might have acted upon, even? If Crowley had kissed him goodbye outside Elena L’Etoile that night, or if they’d held hands on that bench?

Would either of them be alive right now?

Or would Aziraphale have come home and been greeted by the sight of Crowley’s corpse on the floor of his shop, and a spear through his own throat?

“I don’t know what to do about it. Bury it again, I guess. Hope it stays down there, this time.”

He was never sure how to end these prayer sessions. _Amen_ was traditional, of course, but it was also the traditional sign off for the formal praying that he knew for a fact reached Heaven, so, call him superstitious, but he really would rather not, just in case the whole thing got retroactively sent straight to the Metatron. So, instead, he sat there in silence for a time, sipping the regurgitated alcohol that he was far beyond tasting and was definitely going to regret ingesting anyway.

And then the phone was ringing.

It was late at night, and he was very drunk, and his phone was continuing to ring. Aziraphale, through a lack of better options, let it. Crowley was always on him to get an ansaphone, and sometimes-

Crowley. _Crowley_.

Carefully, Aziraphale set down his glass, and made his way from the sitting room to the sales floor. The phone continued to ring. He picked it up.

_Crowley?_ That was what he wanted to say. _This is A. Z. Fell &Co., owner Ezra Fell speaking._ That was what he should said, for the sake of appearances. But the words got stuck and he ended up saying nothing at all.

“Yep,” Crowley said, after just long enough for Aziraphale to be sure he was projecting, that he didn’t recognize the breathing on the other end after all. “Line’s busy.”

Aziraphale felt rather like he might collapse against the till in relief. He managed to slump into the chair behind it instead. “Oh dear,” he replied.

They didn’t say anything more. They couldn’t risk anything more. But Aziraphale could press the receiver against his ear, and he could breathe, and he could listen to Crowley do the same on the other end of the line.

They didn’t need to. Breathe, that is. But it became noticeable, after a time, that they weren’t breathing, and so they’d decided to learn. They’d carved out a fortnight’s truce for themselves one winter, on the hills outside of Sepat, and they’d practiced as the moon waned from full to new, critiquing the little clouds of ice crystals they made on exhalation. When the humans had come up to light to signal fires to announce the sighting of the new moon, they’d mingled amongst them and then toasted their success when, this time, no one noticed anything amiss.

After all these years, Aziraphale still didn’t know if he knew the sounds of Crowley breathing because they learned to breath together, or because he’d known Crowley for so long that there was scarcely a part of him that wasn’t instantly recognizable to him.

He swallowed heavily. Crowley inhaled sharply in reply.

He could hear more than just his breathing, of course. There was some ambient noise- a car going by, the pounding beat of club music, the perpetual summertime singing of insects.

‘Are you at that club, the one in Islington?’ he could have asked, if he could have been sure that no one was listening. ‘The one with the name you found so funny?’

The name of the club was the Fallen Angel, and it wasn’t the name Crowley had found funny, so much as Aziraphale’s consistent patronage of a place with such a name.

Really, though, the place was much more his speed than most other clubs of its type. The decorating was just sumptuous, and as it was functionally a café between the hours of three and six, it had a very decent menu. It had poetry readings, art gallery exhibitions, and even the occasional string quartet. There were rooms above the club, used for support group meetings. Those wonderful people from the miners’ strike had met there sometimes, and Aziraphale helped run a group for people experiencing a crisis of faith alongside their crisis of sexual identity.

‘We went there together once, sort of,’ he could have said, if he could have been sure that no one could hear. ‘About two years ago, at the back the end of ’88. They were trying to institute a woman’s-only night. I stood outside with a few like-minded fellows and tried to convince men going into the bar to let the lesbians have their own time. You sauntered past, presenting female for the evening, and raised Hell for the men who got past me.’

It was always such a pleasure, when they could work together.

Crowley sucked in a bit of air between his teeth with a hiss. Aziraphale let out a puff of air with a quiet sigh.

_Tell me you’re here, on Earth. Tell me you’re safe, and that your side are leaving you be. Tell me you’re out with people and not as wretchedly alone in this as I am._

They could say nothing. But they stayed on the line until the preprogrammed operator asked Crowley to insert more coins to continue his call, and then Crowley hung up with a gentle click.

Aziraphale stayed where he was, phone still cradled against his ear.

It could have been a coincidence, that Crowley had called so soon after Aziraphale had wished to know how he was. It was probably a coincidence. More probably, Crowley had felt the same need to hear from Aziraphale as Aziraphale had felt to hear from him, and was, as usual, more willing to reach out.

In spite of- even though he’d-

Unbidden, Crowley’s parting words played through his mind: _You saved my life. That’s what really happened. Remember that._

Right. He had said he’d do that, hadn’t he? He’d said he’d try, at least.

  
And, of course, there was the third option for the timing to consider as well.

He tilted his head back up. There was a skylight in the roof of his shop, dirty enough not to let in much let, and with light pollution in London being what it was, he wouldn’t have been able to see any stars anyway.

But, of course, it wasn’t Heaven he was praying to, so it didn’t much matter which direction he faced.

“Thank You,” he said.

If nothing else, it seemed a perfectly acceptable way to end his prayers.

* * *

He didn’t sleep, but somehow or another he must have dozed off because the next thing he knew he was being stabbed in the eye with the midmorning sunshine.

  
Hangovers were a mercifully rare occurrence in his life. He and Crowley had learned the trick to sobering up soon after the invention of alcohol, and they’d been quite scrupulous about it ever since that business in Nineveh. It had just seemed like such a shame to let all that alcohol go to waste while everyone went around repenting in ashes and sackcloth, and they’d quite forgotten to sober up in the middle of all that, well-

He couldn’t call it revelry. The entire city was meant to be atoning for their sins, after all, and they were meant to be blending in. So they’d sat in companionable silence, and occasionally companionable quiet conversation, and at one point companionable barely-smothered giggles as they watched someone attempt to wrangle a cat into sackcloth, and quite forgotten sobriety.

They’d regretted it, come morning, as they were leaving city. Crowley had had it worse than Aziraphale- he’d practically had to carry the demon out the gate. They’d passed a man later that afternoon, keeping watch over the city under the shade of a castor oil plant. Crowley had gotten very annoyed at the sight, and had cursed the plant to wither.

“Sssuffer in this sssun like the rest of usss,” Crowley had hissed as Aziraphale had dragged him away.

In the midst of his own near-blinding hangover, he hadn’t recognized the man as Jonah. Hearing that story later had given him a bit of a funny turn, and he was quite glad to have gained the foresight necessary to sober up before he reached that point of inebriation.

This hangover was, undoubtedly, much worse than the one he’d had in Nineveh. Upon waking, he’d actually shouted, and knocked the telephone to the floor in his haste to get his arm between his face and the sun’s rays.

He cracked open an eyelid and immediately regretted it. “_Fuck_,” he said, with feeling.

That was the second time this week that he’d said that. He was beginning to develop a bit of a potty mouth.

In between Nineveh and today, he’d been hit in the head rather hard, several times. The Crusades, in particular, had been really nasty, what with never knowing which side Heaven was going to assign him to next on top of all that messy urban fighting. It had given him a knack for healing head injuries while suffering from them, and he was relieved to find that the skill carried over to hangovers.

Nearly six thousand years in the same corporation had its benefits. He knew the workings of his body extremely well.

He looked down at himself, and winced. He was still wearing the suit he’d put on Tuesday morning, more or less. He’d never put the jacket back on after cleaning the sitting room, his sleeves were still mostly rolled up and still stained with ink, and he’d undone all but the bottom button of his waistcoat at some point. He looked a mess- which, after two days of wearing the same clothing through cleaning up after a demonic home invasion and an angelic forensics team, restoring some of his papyrus scrolls, and drinking admittedly far too much alcohol, he supposed he rather was.

Right. So, first things first: he needed to change his clothing.

He felt better, once in a fresh suit. He kept some mint tea, which he could stand to drink plain, and once fortified he went about the business of disposing of the alcohol he’d ruined last night, silently bemoaning his own lack of foresight every time he found himself pouring what had once been a very rare or expensive vintage down the drain.

It wasn’t until he was sorting through the recycling that he realized: he should have gotten another knock on his door when he’d miracled away his hangover.

He set down the bottle, picked up one of the utility knives from the block on his kitchen counter and slid it up his jacket sleeve, and left the shop for the first time since it’d happened.

He went out the kitchen door, and let his angelic senses stretch out in ways he generally tried to avoid, ever since urban population centers started numbering upwards of a million souls. Humanity filtered in first: Monica was having an argument with her mother over the telephone and wanted to throw the thing out the window, Georgie had just woken up to a hangover as well, Pavel was curled up in bed, homesick and sore with it, Ruth was calling for her cat and not quite sure she was calling it by the right name, Aaron was helping Colin into the shower praying that it wouldn’t be for the last time, Adelaide had just opened up her store and was hoping for a quiet day, Shireen was just coming home from her shift at the hospital, tired to the bone, perhaps she could use a comfy armchair…

And there were six angelic presences across the street from his shop, and new angelic wards encircling it, which was mildly encouraging. Better than any alternative explanation for the lack of knocking that Aziraphale could think of, that was for certain.

He relaxed slightly, and made his way around to the front of the shop.

  
The angels were congregated, quite conspicuously. Thankfully, despite what those insipid little men with their ‘generous offers’ for his bookshop kept trying to tell him, Soho was still Soho, and conspicuous was not quite the same as remarkable. Hardly anyone would remember seeing them, no miracles required.

“Oh, Aziraphale,” said the guard, whose name Aziraphale suddenly realized he didn’t know. “There you are!”

“Yes, hello!” he said. “I see you finished the warding?”

“Yes, I was just about to bring you the paperwork,” ey replied, thrusting out a clipboard. “All you have to do is sign.”

Aziraphale took the proffered clipboard and read over the paperwork carefully. He’d been fudging his paperwork ever since his first self-evaluation form had asked him how often he maintained his sword, and was subsequently very aware of the possibility of being tripped up by fine print.

There didn’t seem to be any fine print. What each of the wards did, and how they were laid was written out in explicit detail, which was handy. All of them would keep out Crowley until he managed to find some excuse or another to modify them, which unfortunately nullified the bookshop as a meeting place, but he’d expected that.

“You are going to get a copy of that for yourself,” the guard said when he was two-thirds of the way through reading.

“I certainly hope so,” Aziraphale replied, not bothering to look up.

Once he’d read the entire thing through, he signed it, and without much more ado the angels were gone.

They were finally gone.

Aziraphale’s kitchen door locked itself with a click, the knife returned to the block on the counter, and his wallet found itself tucked into his trouser pocket. He smiled, and almost breathed deeply before he remembered how polluted London air was. Still. It was a beautiful day.

Edgware Road was a good half an hour’s walk out, but he felt a deep craving for some sweet manakish. He took off at a brisk pace, enjoying the sunshine on the top of his head, and the chatter of people around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Was Lillias Graham a lesbian? Absolutely no idea, but everything I could Google about her said she had a lifelong female companion and made no note of any husband or children, so that's what I went with here.  
-When _The Bottle_ was first published, there were some pricey collectible editions made as well.  
\- I feel like we as a fandom got so caught up in wondering where the fuck Raphael was that we complete neglected the fact that _Sandalphon is the fucker we've been setting a place for at every Passover ever_. And now every time I read a fluffy Passover fic I am on edge, waiting to see if he's going to crash the party.  
-[The Fallen Angel](https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/09/1984-pub-the-fallen-angel-islington-london/) was the name of a real club, and it sounds like it was the place to be for a while there.  
-I have no idea how pay phones functioned in the UK in 1990, and can barely remember whether or not you could hear the "please insert more money to continue your call" message in this one if you were the one being called. Let's just go on and handwave that, then.


	6. Injustice To The Wage Earner, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about one of the new tags: there is a little discussion of the Holocaust. I'm going to summarize it in the end notes, and provide a link to the little discussion we had about it over on the kinkmeme, because I didn't warn for that when I posted it on the kinkmeme and that was wrong of me. 
> 
> Again, for people reading this here as well as on the meme: it's my family history, and while I feel like I have the right to write about it, I should not only know that other people who share that history have an entirely different and entirely valid reaction to it, but act like it. I'm sorry for fucking that up. 
> 
> If you want to skip it, you can start scrolling at _It had been her post since the Black Death, if I recall correctly._ and stop again at _“Since when?” Crowley scoffed._

He hadn’t meant to stay out all night, he really hadn’t. He’d had a little case of cabin fever, that was all. He’d spent longer in his shop that just two and a halfish days, of course, but only when he had projects to work on, or a stack of reading to do. It had been his choice, those other times.  
  
And he’d had food in the shop to eat, or had been able to have it delivered, of course. This time, he hadn’t eaten since before he’d gotten on that plane on Monday, and he was feeling rather peckish once Thursday came around, and he no longer had to contend with the offer of having an angel tail him as went about the city.  
  
So he went to Edgware Road, and he enjoyed some sweet manakish and even sweeter ginger tea. And then he started to head home, he really did, but then he passed his barber’s and thought to himself _You know what, it would feel nice to have my hair done right about now._  
  
Arthur could tell, of course, that he’d run into some kind of trouble. He’d been coming here for… honestly, far more years than he should have. Enough for Arthur’s quiet suspicion that he was not aging like a human to ease into a quiet acceptance of the fact that he probably was not human. It wasn’t the sort of behavior Heaven approved of. He kept telling himself that he would have to switch to another barber soon; deep down, he knew he wasn’t going to until after Arthur retired.  
  
“Everything all right there, Ezra?” he asked.  
  
He decided to keep his lying as close to truth as possible. “I’ve had an awful week. I returned home from holiday in Peru on Monday-”  
  
“Ooh, how awful,” Arthur teased.  
  
Which did make what Aziraphale have to say next a bit embarrassing for him. “-and found my shop in the middle of being robbed.”  
  
“Jesus,” Arthur said, fumbling his towel. “Robbers. In _your_ shop? Were they junkies of some kind?”  
  
Like most of the neighborhood, Arthur was aware that his bookshop, being located on a very spacious and busy corner lot in Soho, was considered quite a prize for various land developing firms of varying degrees of legality. He was also aware that many of the people who made him offers subsequently seemed to mysteriously forgot that his shop existed, or that they’d even wanted to build in Soho in the first place. To most people, the most logical explanation for all of this was that Ezra Fell enjoyed the sort of extra-legal protection that came from having a lover in some kind of organized criminal enterprise- the candidate of choice for said lover being the red-haired man in the sunglasses that he was occasionally seen about town with. Aziraphale had never corrected anyone on any of these points. It was generally for the best to let the humans come up with their own ideas about who they were, and besides, he wanted to see the look on Crowley’s face when he caught wind of this permutation of the presumption that they were a couple.  
  
“Yes. Professionals, I think. They were certainly determined. It took me the whole of the night to see them off. And then I had to call the _police_.”  
  
Arthur’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Talk about adding insult to injury.”  
  
As an agent of Heaven, Aziraphale was practically required to defend law enforcement. As Ezra Fell, who was running a bookshop in Soho- specifically running it right now, post-Section 28 and concurrently with the AIDS epidemic- he understood exactly where Arthur was coming from. “Tell me about it. Do you know, I think they did more damage to my shop than the robbers? And I am almost certain they stole one of my first editions. One of my _Wildes_, no less.”  
  
“You should make a complaint,” Arthur advised.  
  
“Oh, I doubt it would do any good,” Aziraphale said with a sigh.  
  
“Still. You should get it on record, just in case.”  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
Arthur hummed in a displeased manner, but let it drop. He gave Aziraphale the full treatment: shaving off the fine layer of stubble that he had not had prior to entering the shop, shampooing and conditioning his hair before cutting it just a tad shorter. It felt good, to have his hands on him- professional but not unfriendly, neither holy nor unholy, but mundane and entirely without malice. He even had a new cologne for Aziraphale to try, something that smelled of bergamot with notes of vanilla and lavender. It reminded Aziraphale of a bracing cup of Earl Grey tea, and he found he rather liked it.  
  
Aziraphale left feeling quite refreshed, walked straight past the turn he would usually make when headed home, and eventually ended up in the British Museum.  
  
He only stayed for about an hour or so. It simply wasn’t the same, being there without Crowley to turn to and say _Did you ever meet..?_ or _Have I ever told you about..?_ or better yet _Do you remember when..?_  
  
He went south from there. Home was to the south, a bit, though he didn’t go home just yet. He did walk along Fleet Street for a time, though. It looked so _strange_, now, after the Wapping dispute had played itself out and so many of the newspapers had moved offices. Eventually he ended up at Sweetings, which had remained comfortably itself since its opening- quite an achievement for an establishment that had just passed its centennial, especially for one which had specialized in seafood since oysters and lobsters were looked down upon as food for peasants. They did a good Black Velvet too, though as it was barely mid afternoon Aziraphale limited himself to two drinks with his lunch.  
  
He headed north after that. He was getting farther and farther away from home, he did realize that but… it didn’t seem very important. He’d locked up. It wasn’t like he could open the shop in the state it was in. Soho would survive without him, for a while longer.

So. North he went. He ended up at Fredrick’s for dinner- it was a lovely place, such a pleasant garden, the à la carte menu and wine selection were also quite substantial- and stayed until closing. Then he went a little more south and little bit more east, and ended up outside the Fallen Angel.  
  
Crowley wouldn’t be here. He knew that. It would be foolish and dangerous for him to be here. If Aziraphale knew Crowley- and he knew the demon quite well- he’d gotten into the Bentley within a minute of hanging up last night, and peeled off to drive with absolute reckless abandon for the next few hours. He wouldn’t be back here in a hurry, not when there was the faintest chance that their call, near silent though it had been, might have been overheard and traced.  
  
Crowley wouldn’t be there, but it would be open until three, and Aziraphale wasn’t going to go home. He couldn’t. Not yet.  
  
The problem, Aziraphale could finally admit to himself come midnight or so, was that if he went home there would be nothing to do but to put a lid on it, so to speak. Find someone to tear up the remaining floorboards and replace them, find a new home for the armchair and perhaps the rug… and then, if not forget all about it, then at least no longer be persistently reminded of it. Given a few days’ time, that whole horrid night would sink to the very bottom of his mental pit, and he would only be able to recall the details if he was pressed very hard.  
  
He needed to speak with Crowley first, before he could allow himself to do that. He needed to know that he was all right- or that he could be all right again, with time. He needed to know what, if anything, Crowley needed from him, before he could even attempt to put anything away.  
  
So, he stayed at the Fallen Angel until that closed as well, and then he shared a taxi ride with a young, very inebriated fellow who lived clear on the other side of the Thames. He made sure the young man got home safely, and then wandered around a bit.

Elmington Estate wasn’t the sort of neighborhood one should really be wandering around in during the early hours of the morning. It made as good an excuse as any, to cloak himself in personal wards, should Heaven ask. What a pity it would be if he were to discorporate now, after everything.  
  
So he walked, unnoticed and unnoticeable, drawing his metaphorical cloak so tightly around him that he was soon invisible to all but the most determined and well informed of celestial eyes. It would hopefully make meeting at the park with Crowley that evening safer.  
  
It also made ordering lunch difficult, particularly as he’d had his heart set on Lido’s, which didn’t offer take away. It took a bit of doing, making the wait staff think they had heard an extra order for this bottle of wine to that table, and this dish for that one, and so on and so forth. By the time he’d assembled his meal everyone in the kitchen was looking a bit frazzled, so he blessed the other patrons with generosity and miracled the money his own meal would have cost into the till.  
  
It was far too early to go to St. James’. He went anyway. It might be for the best, that he’d come so early. That way the wards he laid around their bench to keep unwanted attention from them wouldn’t be connected with Crowley’s entrance to the park. Though, of course, if the demon was being that closely watched then they were done for already.  
  
There was nothing to be done about it. If Aziraphale saw anything that was cause for alarm, he could always leave, and leave a message behind for Crowley to find. He didn’t even have to leave it himself, if he saw it coming early enough. Young Shadwell and his lot were good at this sort of thing, dead drops and secret messages. He almost felt bad about poaching them from Crowley, for all that the demon didn’t seem to have had any use for them beyond that one called-off caper for holy water.  
  
He tried not to dwell on it. He tried not to look at every too-loud park goer and wonder if they were an angel who could not conform their behavior to Earth standards. He tried not to watch each jogger stretch themselves out and wonder if it was a demon who could not quite make their body fit a human mold.  
  
He tried to enjoy his lunch, eating it in small bites and savoring each one. There was certainly a lot to taste, with dishes like fried spicy prawns with cashew nuts, stewed oysters with chilis and black bean sauce, and deep-fried custard buns. In addition to some truly excellent Cantonese cooking, Lido’s had a fantastic and quite international wine menu. He had a small demi bottle of full-bodied Chianti Classico to wash it down with, and a standard bottle of Entre Deux Mers to share with Crowley when he arrived.  
  
The sun shone down warmly, and the warmth lingered even as it began to set. He finished his meal, and banished the rubbish to the bins and the waste to the septic tank. Every so often one of the ducks quacked in his direction, like they could tell that someone who normally fed them was meant to be there and were perplexed by his absence. One woman stopped in front of him, and put her body through a series of contortions.  
  
“Wasn’t there a bench there?” she asked her friend in far too loud a voice.  
  
“I don’t know? Maybe?” her companion replied, at a normal volume. “Maybe there were budget cuts. Look, the sun’s going down, are we running or what, Marge?”  
  
The two of them took off down the footpath not a moment later. They were both utterly, obviously human. Aziraphale folded his hands in his lap to stop himself from worrying a hole into his cuffs, instead twisting his ring on his finger over and over and over again.

At half past eight, Crowley appeared in the park. He strode right past Aziraphale and their bench without sparing a glance in their direction, and did a circuit around the duck pond. He was moving well, his hips swaying with his usual swagger, seemingly unhindered by any lingering pain. Only once he’d satisfied himself with the lack of occult and ethereal presences did he circle back around and take his seat. Aziraphale felt him erect wards of his own, and silently approved. On a handful of other occasions, they’d been so caught up in seeing one another that they gone several minutes- or even hours- before realizing that neither of them had warded their meeting from prying eyes. They could never be too careful- the events of Monday night had proved that.  
  
Crowley didn’t say anything. Fair enough. Aziraphale didn’t know where to start either.  
  
He took a moment to study Crowley. He’d changed up his look a fair bit. Previously his hair had been in that style that he’d described as ‘business in the front, party in the back’. Aziraphale had originally found the style to be as atrocious as the tagline, but like most things Crowley-related it had grown on him. It was all business now, cut short and slicked back. It went with the sleek modern suit he wore, no waistcoat, just black slacks and jacket over a dark grey shirt and a thin and brilliantly red necktie. Even his sunglasses had a sort of high-end sharpness about them.  
  
Then Crowley craned his head and looked in the direction Aziraphale normally approached from, and he realized that he might have made his personal wards a bit too strong.  
  
“Sorry,” Aziraphale apologized as he dropped them.  
  
Crowley started and let out a quiet “Oh!”  
  
“I might be a little paranoid, right now,” Aziraphale explained.  
  
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” Crowley said.  
  
“Wine?” Aziraphale offered, holding out the Entre Deux Mers to the demon.  
  
“Straight from the bottle?” Crowley asked, even as he took the bottle and uncorked it.  
  
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly been having that sort of week,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Yeah, no, that’s just about the size of it,” Crowley said.  
  
Aziraphale let him take the first swig before asking the first necessary question. “Did your side give you any trouble?”  
  
“Nope,” Crowley replied. “They were pleased as punch when I gave them the news that four angels had Fallen. Less pleased when I left them a message yesterday to tell them that something had clearly gone wrong, but they weren’t too put out. Dagon barely threatened me at all, which was good because she was using Kylie Minogue’s voice to do it, and somehow that makes it all so much worse.”  
  
“And your wounds?”  
  
“You took care of most of it,” Crowley assured him. “The wounds from the holy stuff opened back up again, but I gave that first report to Hell in person. I just swung by Barbas’ place on my way out and got everything back in order, see?” He opened his mouth, showing off his set of white teeth complete with too-long canines, his mostly human-shaped tongue, and the complete lack of bleeding. “I owe him another soul, but it’s not going to be too hard to find a qualified doctor and pretend I was the one who corrupted him. I might just pop off the States and see who’s there and terrible in for-profit medicine this time. I haven’t been to New York in a while. I hear they’re doing some wild stuff with drag balls over there these days. I might poke my head in and have a looksee.”  
  
Last time he’d owed Barbas a soul for his medical care he’d found an absolutely appalling man from Chelsea who treated his work with Médecins Sans Frontières as a sort of sexual predator’s all-you-can-eat buffet. Crowley had taken great pleasure in ruining the man’s life, and Aziraphale had tried not to enjoy his own distinct lack of thwarting too much.  
  
In the here and now, Aziraphale smiled thinly, tried not to read too much into Crowley planning a trip to the other side of the Atlantic, took back the bottle, and drank a generous mouthful.  
  
“Your side?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Slightly more problematic than yours,” Aziraphale admitted. He felt no twinge of disloyalty as he said it, which was disquieting in and of itself. “For one thing, they insisted on redoing the warding for my shop themselves, so you’re not going to be able to come over until I can get that all squared away.”  
  
Crowley grimaced, just as it occurred to Aziraphale that perhaps he wouldn’t want to revisit the scene of his rape.  
  
“Well that sucks,” Crowley said.  
  
Aziraphale forced himself to relax, and passed the bottle back. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good reason to try to dissuade them. It’ll take time to modify them without arousing suspicion.”  
  
“Do they suspect?”  
  
“Sandalphon does,” Aziraphale admitted. “He was Innahon’s commanding officer, apparently. He sent him to place me under surveillance.”  
  
“Fuck,” Crowley said with feeling.  
  
“He doesn’t seem to have any evidence,” Aziraphale hastened to add. “And he told the others that he’d placed _you_ under surveillance, and that they were acting with such secrecy because they thought me to be near Falling.”  
  
“And instead they went out and tried to force you,” Crowley said.  
  
Aziraphale grimaced. “Gabriel gave me something of a run down of Innahon’s reports the other day. Apparently we were seen dining together at Elena’s L’Etoile, the night before I left for Peru.”  
  
“Fuck,” Crowley said again, with even more feeling.  
  
“I managed to play it off as presuming that we’d been seen eating at the same establishment, rather than the same table, with myself none the wiser to your presence. Gabriel seemed to buy it, for whatever that might be worth,” Aziraphale continued. “Still, I think we’re going to have to take them out of our rota, at least for the next decade or so.”  
  
Crowley nodded, and took another mouthful of wine before passing the bottle back to him.  
  
“Sandalphon also received reports that you were here, in London, the whole time,” Aziraphale added, once he’d imbibed. “Of course, the whole operation was very much off the books, and then his source Fell, which rather throws the whole thing into doubt and is tremendously embarrassing for Sandalphon besides.”  
  
“I never liked him, you know,” Crowley said. “Not since that bit of showboating on Mount Carmel.”  
  
“You didn’t know him during the drought,” Aziraphale said. Privately, he’d found the whole Mount Carmel business to have been rather hilarious- though, of course, he hadn’t been the one who’d had to deal with Beelzebub’s temper afterwards. “He was different then. He was kind. He could be kind.”  
  
Crowley scoffed, but offered no further commentary. Aziraphale handed the bottle back to him.  
  
“We might need to stage another fight soon,” Aziraphale said. “I told Gabriel that I thought you might go to ground a bit, but that I expected to be right back to thwarting your wiles within the year. They came to the conclusion that you were responsible for the Fall of Innahon and his attendants without any input from me, which just means that they think you’re essentially responsible for the injuries I sustained, and the death of four angels. They’ll be expecting fireworks, and not the literal kind either.”  
  
“Right. And we’ve got to discuss what happened in Peru too,” Crowley said. “My side’s a bit distracted with the new recruits getting killed before they could attend orientation, but sooner or later someone will remember to ask.”  
  
“Short version: it was a success,” Aziraphale told him. “The long version…”  
  
The long version involved more carnality than he felt comfortable discussing out in the open air. Or with Crowley, under the circumstances. Or even-  
  
It came to him then, as unbidden and unwanted as the bile in his throat: the too trusting, too understanding way Crowley had looked at him, even as he hurt him. It wasn’t so different to how he was looking at Aziraphale now. It was obvious, even with the sunglasses on.  
  
Oh, God have mercy on him, what has he done?  
  
“Maybe we should set up another meeting to discuss Peru and that fight?” Crowley suggested. “Say maybe a week from now?”  
  
What was he doing?  
  
It was so simple. So easy. He didn’t have to think about it at all, to just let things fall back into their well-worn routines, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  
  
But it had. It had happened. He couldn’t- he owed Crowley the chance to acknowledge it.  
  
“We could go out and have dinner somewhere. Maybe Franco’s, we haven’t been to Franco’s in a bit.”  
  
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. His voice was wavering, and he hated it, because he knew exactly the sort of effect it would have on the demon. “Are you… how are you?”  
  
As he feared, Crowley paid every attention to Aziraphale’s tone of voice and none whatsoever to the intent behind his words. His voice was very gentle as he replied “I’m fine, Aziraphale. I’m just fine. How are you doing?”  
  
_Please, be less kind,_ he wanted to beg. _I cannot bear how kind you are._  
  
“I’m-” How he was doing was irrelevant. “I need to know what it is you require. From me.”  
  
“Require?”  
  
“I hurt you,” Aziraphale said, and he hated how distraught he felt, he hated how it showed in his voice, he hated himself, because he knew exactly what it would do to Crowley and he was so _weak_ for it. “I hurt you so terribly, and I-” The only thing for it was to try and speak quickly enough that Crowley wouldn’t have time to react. “I need to know. What do you need? Anything, anything at all. I owe you that, and more, I-”  
  
“Hey,” Crowley reached out and took his hand. He gave it a gentle squeeze, and oh, he was going to cry again, wasn’t he? “It’s not your fault,” Crowley continued. “I told you, it’s not your fault. No one in their right mind would ever think it was your fault, you daft angel.”  
  
It _was_ his fault though. No one from Heaven would have looked at the two of them having dinner and noticed Crowley’s tenderness. No one from Heaven could look at them now and notice it, even. Crowley was a demon. He was not, in the eyes of Heaven, capable of tenderness, or any of the softer feelings he routinely showered Aziraphale with. It wouldn’t matter that they were all capable of sensing that incredible, impossible love Crowley carried with him wherever he went. They never would have believed it. All they would have seen was a demon doing their duty and tempting the righteous to sin, and an angel failing at his and falling for it.  
  
“Look, it’s- you haven’t done anything to warrant it, but if it’s what you need to hear: I forgive you,” Crowley said, damn him or bless him or whatever it took to make him _stop_. “I forgive you, for being stupidly brave, for doing everything in your power to keep me from being hurt more, and, oh yeah, for _saving my life_. I forgive you, for all of that.”  
  
Aziraphale breathed as deeply as he could around the sharp, knotted thing that had become lodged in his throat. Crowley lifted his free hand up. It fluttered by Aziraphale’s cheek for a moment before settling on his shoulder.  
  
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d just as soon as forget it ever happened. Can we just do that?”  
  
“_I_ can,” Aziraphale said, willing him to understand that he was being completely serious. “More or less, at any rate. That’s why I’m asking now. Anything you- it’ll be much harder for me to give you anything later.”  
  
Crowley frowned. “Like, you’re going to literally forget what happened? Just, miracle the memories away?” He sounded like he was trying very hard not to panic, which was understandable. That was not the sort of miracle you could safely perform on yourself. Very few would be able to safely perform it at all, and Aziraphale was definitely not amongst their number.  
  
“Not exactly. It’s not a miracle,” Aziraphale explained. “It’s just… compartmentalization. You know, you can’t stand to think on something, so you just lock it away.”  
  
Crowley nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’ve got a nice little lockbox for the 14th century, I suppose.”  
  
“Mine’s more of a deep, dark pit,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Sounds infernal.” Crowley clearly meant it to tease.  
  
“If I thought about it too long, it probably would be,” Aziraphale admitted. That’s what he was truly afraid of: if he took a real, deep look at himself, if he turned his mental pit inside out and gave it a good shake, then out would come the dangling noose-end of his faith.  
  
He really needed to believe, in God and Her Plan. He needed to believe that there was a point that everything was driving towards, and that it was a good one. He wasn’t sure who he would _be_, otherwise. He wasn’t sure that he _could_ be, without his faith.  
  
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, taken aback. “You’re scaring me, a little.”  
  
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale said, and he meant it too. “It’s- it’s not forgetting, precisely. It’s more like I can stop myself from being reminded. I know the broad strokes of what happened, but the details are obscure. Oftentimes, it’s like something I read in a book.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s still scary,” Crowley said.  
  
Aziraphale didn’t know how to reassure him. “So if you need anything- if you think you might need anything in the future, even- now is the time to tell me. It’ll be- it’ll be very difficult for me to remember the specifics of why you might need anything later. I’ll be- I’ll be quite useless to you, I’m afraid.”  
  
Crowley took his time in answering, silent and still as he thought it all over. Aziraphale wished that he would take his sunglasses off, so that he might be able to read the nuances that were surely visible in his gaze. He wished even more fervently that he possessed the ability to simply intuit what Crowley needed, the same way Crowley was so often able to intuit what Aziraphale needed.  
  
“Do what you have to,” Crowley said decisively. He gave Aziraphale’s hand and shoulder a squeeze, before letting go. “That’s what I’d like. Whatever it takes to help you heal from this, you can do it, you don’t have to worry about me, okay? I _know_, Aziraphale. I know you never would have touched me if it hadn’t been my life at stake. You don’t- I know you wouldn’t. You didn’t want to. I know that.”  
  
Oh, he did not like the way Crowley put that at all. He didn’t like the way he looked as he said it, either.

“Right, so. Let’s meet next Friday. Franco’s at seven sound good to you?” Crowley stood up abruptly, already in retreat.  
  
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley stopped two steps away from the bench.  
  
There had been, for most of Aziraphale’s time on Earth, two needs of competing importance that he had to balance. He needed Crowley to be safe, and he needed to be near Crowley.  
  
That balance shifted, depending on whatever else was going on. When Crowley had first asked him for that holy water, he’d pulled back so far that they hadn’t spoken for nearly eighty years. When Crowley had danced back into his life, walking on consecrated ground for him, trusting him to save them both from the bombs, and then _saving his books_ on top of it all, the need to be near him had grown all the stronger.  
  
Actually giving in and giving him the holy water in 1967 had complicated things. It had been- well. He couldn’t call it the _right_ thing to do. But it had been the _only_ thing to do. The humans the demon had hired wouldn’t have understood how much danger Crowley had placed himself in by putting himself in proximity to the holy water, and it was obvious that the demon wouldn’t be dissuaded from his desires. So Aziraphale had gotten it for him, and for the first time, keeping Crowley safe had meant keeping close by and checking in with Crowley as often as possible.  
  
It hadn’t meant telling him that his feelings were reciprocated.  
  
He wasn’t sure _when_ he’d first made that decision, but the _why_ was obvious enough. Telling Crowley that he loved him, just as deeply as he was loved by him, would falsely dangle out the possibility that they could be together. The reality was that they couldn’t risk it. They _couldn’t_. Not when, at any moment, their bosses might walk in on them. Not when The End was already written, and they were meant to be enemies.  
  
It was quite painful, to live with the knowledge that as much as they might want to love one another, to love in action as well as emotion, it could never be. Aziraphale knew that intimately.  
  
He also knew that living with the idea that his love was unrequited could not be _much_ less painful for Crowley.  
  
_Thus conscience does make cowards of us all_, indeed. Will always did cut to the quick.  
  
But he couldn’t let Crowley think that there was nothing here but some empty angelic duty towards preserving life,or however it must seem like he was rationalizing it. And he couldn’t just- he couldn’t just let Crowley walk away, not after saying those words, not to his flat where he surely kept that thermos of holy water. He couldn’t let that happen.  
  
“There’s something you should know. Something I’ll- I’ll find very hard to say, later, but it will be no less true for that.”  
  
And besides, after all that had happened, after all that Crowley had suffered, didn’t he deserve to know? Did he deserve to make that _choice_? Aziraphale had taken so many of them from him, that night. He was loath to keep this one from him any longer.  
  
It still took several deep breaths to get the words out, and even then, he only managed it because he was quite sure that Crowley had been about to tell him that he didn’t have to say anything. “I love you.”  
  
He could do that much, at least. He could give Crowley the truth.  
  
For a long moment, Crowley didn’t respond. He went still, and then he swayed, and then he managed to collapse back onto the bench. After a moment, he removed his sunglasses and turned to face Aziraphale. “Could you say that again? Please?”  
  
“I love you,” Aziraphale obliged. It was easier the second time. The damage was already done. “I’m in love with you. I have been for- for a very long time.”  
  
It was hard to say when it had started, because looking back on it now, with so much that he didn’t normally think about jangling about in his head, it seemed very much like he’d fallen in love with him over and over and over again. The farthest back he dared to contemplate was Rome: introducing Crowley to oysters, watching the weight lift from his shoulders as they spoke about everything and nothing, and coming upon the incredible realization that he could make the demon _happy_. He’d buried it shortly thereafter, as he’d done so many other times since. After the death of Hypatia, and after the sinking of Ys, and after the Nika riots, he had buried it along with his grief; during the reign of King Alfred I, and during the reign of al-Hakkam II, and during the reign of Casimir III, he had buried it with his worldly attachments; before Hamlet became a hit, and before Murdoch began to demonstrate his steam engines, and before the Great Exhibition, he had buried it with his wonder.  
  
The most recent occurrence of falling in love had been the church, _That Church_, during the Blitz in 1941. And he just hadn’t quite managed to bury it since. It had grown too big. _And he didn’t want to._  
  
There was no need to ask when the demon had started to love him. Aziraphale had felt it from the start, that first blush of infatuation and curiosity on the walls of Eden, the complication of those first hints of trust on the Arc when Aziraphale _saw_ and then turned a blind eye, the joy that grew whenever they would meet over the years, the sheer relief when Aziraphale had come to him after that dreadful business with the Inquisition that he knew Crowley could never have been involved with, the ache that released as Aziraphale slowly compromised and stopped denying the efficacy of the Arrangement, every time he didn’t deny their friendship, even. He’d felt it, as it sweetened and fortified and aged like a particularly fine vintage of wine.  
  
He felt it now, flushed through with hope. He felt the moment that hope withered as Crowley realized that it didn’t make one bit of difference, too.  
  
“Oh no,” Crowley said softly.  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, letting his gaze drop. “That was my conclusion as well.”  
  
“They wouldn’t- they’d- it’d be worse,” Crowley said wildly, as though Aziraphale didn’t already _know_. “If they ever found out…”  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Quite.”  
  
“Quite?” Crowley repeated, incredulous. “_Quite_?!”  
  
Aziraphale shrugged. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”  
  
Crowley still had his sunglasses off. If anything, their lack made him look even more distraught. Aziraphale could only bear to look at it out of the corner of his eye. “I want you to be a little upset about this, maybe? You’d Fall, Aziraphale. If this had been an official investigation, if the Archangel bloody Michael had been in charge, then it wouldn’t have mattered what you did or did not do, much less what you felt or did not feel. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did or did not believe, even. You’d have Fallen. She’d have _made_ you.”  
  
“Yes, I’d heard that rumor,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“It’s not a rumor!”  
  
“So I gathered,” Aziraphale said, more curtly than he’d intended. “I’m sorry, it’s just- that’s part of the best case scenario.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Crowley said, low and dangerous. “That’s the _best case scenario_?”  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, looking straight ahead to where the sliver of the waxing crescent moon was just visible in the reflection on the duck pond. “Best case scenario: the officially accepted narrative is that you have seduced me away from my duties. I Fall, you get one of the odious commendations your side occasionally gives you for things which are in no way your fault. We’re both demons then, which is far from ideal-”  
  
“Far from ideal!”  
  
“- but, crucially, we’re both still alive,” Aziraphale said.  
  
Crowley had been spluttering incoherently in rage, but at those words he fell silent.  
  
“The worst case scenario- and the most likely scenario- is that neither of our sides find our relationship tolerable, and they kill us,” Aziraphale added. "You're not supposed to be able to love any more than I'm supposed to love you."  
  
The was a sort of middling scenario, of course: Crowley was killed by Heaven and Aziraphale made to Fall. That one only qualified as a middling scenario rather than the worst case scenario because, with all trace of loyalty to Heaven burned out by the Fall, Aziraphale would at least be able to point himself in the direction of Michael, or Sandalphon, or whoever had actually done the deed and see how much damage he was capable of inflicting before he was inevitably brought down. It ranked slightly higher than a dual execution because Aziraphale would at least be able to mildly inconvenience their killers in retaliation.  
  
“Does your side do a lot of that?” Crowley asked, after a moment.  
  
“We have a public execution once a century or so,” Aziraphale told him with a shrug. “Often enough to keep the rest of us on our toes without thinning our numbers overmuch, I suspect. The last one was held in 1942. The Principality Neshamael. She’d been stationed in Poland for quite some time- longer even than I’ve been in England. It had been her post since the Black Death, if I recall correctly.”  
  
“You got a summons,” Crowley remembered. “And then maybe an hour or so after you’d said your goodbyes and left, _I_ got a message from my side telling me that I’d gotten that _fucking commendation_ for-”  
  
“- the first use of gas chambers as an instrument of mass murder in the Holocaust,” Aziraphale finished for him. “Yes. I remember.”  
  
He remembered, in fragments, the look of absolute fury and betrayal on Neshamael’s face as she’d walked to her death, and a glimpse of her body as it began to unravel once the deed had been done. He remembered, much more clearly, returning home to find Crowley passed out cold in his kitchen. He’d never seen him in such a state, not even after the Inquisition- though of course, when Crowley had gotten drunk in the wake of the Inquisition, he’d been doing it in taverns, where concerned humans would cut him off, or kick him out if he grew too dangerously inebriated. It had taken him three days to wake up, even with Aziraphale’s healing miracles. He’d been rather afraid that the demon was going to discorporate.  
  
“She was- she was trying to stop it, then?” Crowley asked.  
  
“She’d been slowing them down, somewhat,” Aziraphale said. “As I understand it, they’d settled on gas a while back, but hadn’t gotten around to fully implementing it. They’d been using carbon monoxide in the Aktion T4 program for years by then, and they already had a fleet of gas wagons operating out of Chełmno. It was those chambers that were new- that and the Zyklon B pellets. She’d done what she could to slow down construction: misplace shipments, collapse beams, switch out inventory so that they ended up with the wrong kind of screws. She’d done what she could, to get people out of the ghettos whenever possible, and see that there was some semblance of organization and support they could turn to when it was not possible. Blessings of bravery and fortitude here, a little divine inspiration there... all very much within normal parameters. And it wasn’t enough to stop the genocide, so she then started killing SS officers.”  
  
“Why the fuck would she get into trouble over that?”  
  
“Well, we’re not supposed to go around murdering humans,” Aziraphale explained. “Not even Nazis. Not even to save other humans.”  
  
To be human was to be redeemable. That was the promise, a covenant made with all humanity through Moses in the aftermath of that debacle with the golden calf, affirmed again and again with Jonah, with Jesus, with Muhammad, with more prophets and saints and righteous people than Aziraphale had ever been told of. For as long as they lived, a human might change their ways, might repent and, in turn, be redeemed. To cut off a human’s life was to cut off that potential, and so they were not allowed to kill without a direct command from the top.  
  
It was a lovely sentiment, in theory. It was difficult to hold to when your home was being bombed. It seemed almost inevitable that Neshamael had been unable to hold to it when her home had been invaded and turned into a charnel house.  
  
“Since when?” Crowley scoffed. “The Great Flood? The Plagues? Jericho? Does any of this ring a bell?”  
  
“Done on orders,” Aziraphale said. “Which apparently makes all the difference to Heaven.”  
  
“You understand that, when you say _done on orders_ during a conversation involving literal Nazi war crimes-”  
  
“It’s not a defense of Heaven’s actions,” Aziraphale hastened to correct him, even knowing full well that in a different, more usual state of mind, he _would_ be using it as a defense. “It’s not a defense of my _in_actions either. It’s just- it is how it is. There are very few of us on Earth, and fewer still who learn to care about humanity as anything other than a means to an end.” Angels and demons were both sterile, after all. Without the influx of souls there could be no way to replenish their numbers after the First War, much less build up their armies for the Great War. “I can fumble those _on orders_ jobs, when I get them. You know that- I come to you for help with that, when I can. I can influence people to be a bit kinder to one another, or a bit braver, or what have you. I can hope that they behave in beneficial ways because of it. But at the end of the day I can’t color too far outside the lines without paying severely for it. And I don’t- I don’t want to die. And I don’t see that my death would do any good. None of my superiors would flinch from it, and anyone who might be sympathetic would just be made more afraid by it. You and London would be stuck with an angel who neither knew nor cared for much of anything down here, if they even bothered to replace me at all. I don’t believe anyone has taken up Neshamael’s posting since her death.”  
  
“You’ve gotten a lot more jobs in Eastern Europe, since the war ended,” Crowley observed.  
  
“Yes, I suppose I have,” Aziraphale confirmed.  
  
They sat in silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, Crowley let out a great bark of bitter laughter.  
  
“What?” Aziraphale asked, turning to face him.  
  
“It’s just- it’s silly. But. Angel. I can’t _believe_ we aren’t having an argument about ineffability right now,” Crowley told him.  
  
“Well, I don’t feel like much of an angel right now,” Aziraphale admitted. “I don’t feel like much of anything at all.”  
  
He hadn’t meant to cut any semblance of mirth from Crowley’s eyes with his words, but it was obvious that he’d accomplished such anyway. Crowley looked at him, sad and worried, until Aziraphale could bear it no longer and looked away again.  
  
“I’m going to need to put all new flooring in,” Aziraphale said, hoping to fill the silence with something a little less weighty than Crowley’s regard for him. “Heaven sent down technicians, and they tore up the floorboards where the remains were. I’ll need a new chair, too. I can’t- I can’t look at it, not without being sucked right back into my memories.”  
  
Crowley laid a hand against his shoulder again. It felt shockingly warm.  
  
“You know what?” Crowley said. “Let’s get absolutely sozzled.”  
  
Aziraphale looked down, involuntarily, to where the bottle of Entre Deux Mers had ended up on the ground between them. At least one of them had had a sense to make sure it was sitting the right way up, though God only knew who.  
  
“I mean, let’s take that with us, yeah, definitely,” Crowley said, following his gaze. “But I meant- let’s go back to my place, I’ve got a spectacular amount of alcohol, and let’s just get rip-roaringly drunk. What do you say?”  
  
It was, objectively, a terrible idea. But right now, with all the things that he normally did not think about flashing into the forefront of his mind, he could not pretend that he could find it within himself to deny Crowley anything.  
  
“By all means,” Aziraphale said. “You’ll have to lead the way, though. I don’t think I’ve ever been to your current home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The Holocaust stuff: Heaven's policy during WWII was "you can't kill humans without orders from on high, no, not even Nazis". Neshamael, who was Polish in roughly the same way Aziraphale is English, found that she couldn't hold to this policy, and for that she was executed. Additionally, Crowley got a commendation for the Holocaust, he was not happy about it. These two things happened right around the same time, which suggests that they're related. [Here](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=1216104#cmt1216104) is the discussion we had about it on the kink meme.  
-Edgware Road has been the place to get Middle Eastern food in London since the Ottoman Empire was still around.  
-All of the restaurants mentioned by name are real and still exist (with the exception of the aforementioned Fallen Angel). There was a lot more googling of menus involved with writing this than I thought there was going to be when I started.  
-Relatedly: thank you Google Maps for helping me to map out Aziraphale's walk.  
-Some lovely person volunteered to beta read what I had up on the kinkmeme! Thank you for catching all of my typos!


	7. Injustice to the Wage Earner, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans, and Happy Overtime and Holiday Pay to my fellow American retail workers!

Crowley lived in Mayfair, Aziraphale knew, though Crowley had never volunteered an exact address and Aziraphale had never asked for one. The building was quite a modern construction, a great brutal concrete slab with quite a few noticeable security measures, from the gates they needed to be buzzed through by a doorman to the cameras that followed them in through the main lobby, into the elevator, and up to the sixth story.  
  
Wordlessly, Crowley guided him over to apartment 66, unlocked the door, and waved him inside.  
  
“Oh my word,” Aziraphale said as he crossed the threshold. “This is-” _almost Heavenly_ he nearly said, but Crowley wouldn’t take it as a compliment, and Aziraphale didn’t mean it as one either. “-rather spacious.”  
  
Spacious was a _very_ polite way to put it. Crowley’s flat was an empty, echoing cavern of a space: sterile white walls and shelves and appliances, almost no personal touches whatsoever. An actual cavern would have been homier.  
  
“Thanks, I just moved in yesterday,” Crowley said.  
  
“Oh!” Aziraphale said, surprised. His surprise was very quickly overtaken by his horror as the obvious reason for this presented itself to him. “Oh no, they didn’t- they didn’t kidnap you out of your home, did they?”  
  
“What? No,” Crowley said, throwing the deadbolt behind them. “No, I just- I felt like a change, you know?”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, though truthfully he didn’t know. Getting rid of his armchair, redoing his sitting room floor… it was a necessity, but it wasn’t something he particularly relished the idea of doing. He couldn’t imagine just packing up and leaving the bookshop, even after everything.  
  
“I’m thinking of painting the place, maybe putting some dark granite or marble into the kitchen. I’m going to be getting some new furniture, too. I was thinking I might get a throne for my office.”  
  
“A throne?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Yeah, I saw a really tacky one in Harrod’s the other day- well, last week. It was _glorious_. I was thinking I might steal it,” Crowley said.  
  
“Well, while as an angel I can’t endorse any such extra-legal activities-” Aziraphale began. Crowley blew a raspberry at him. “- if you need help shifting anything that’s already in your possession, I’d be more than happy to help.”  
  
Crowley looked at him, his eyebrow arched.  
  
“What?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
For an answer, Crowley raised his hand and snapped his fingers. A handful of personal effects manifested around the flat.  
  
“Ah. Right,” Aziraphale said, ducking his head slightly. “Your side doesn’t have any rules about frivolous miracle use.”  
  
“You know, all things considered, you might be able to get away with a bit of that, for the next little while at least,” Crowley said.  
  
“Ha!” Aziraphale said. “No, no. I don’t think so. I already wasn’t supposed to do any miracles between the Archangels arriving at my home and when they finished warding it Thursday morning.”  
  
“No, really?” Crowley asked.  
  
“It made drinking a real adventure, that’s for certain,” Aziraphale confirmed.  
  
“Speaking of,” Crowley said, sauntering deeper into the flat. “It might be brand new, but I made sure to stock my kitchen with the four essential drink groups: beers, wines, spirits, and liqueurs. What poison should we break out first?”  
  
Aziraphale made to follow him into the kitchen, but he stopped suddenly as a familiar-looking _something_ caught his eye. It was a stone statue- no, it was an eagle lectern, it was-  
  
“This is from That Church,” Aziraphale said, holding out a reverent hand but not quite daring to touch it to the aged stone.  
  
“What?” Crowley said, a note of panic in his voice as he hurried back to Aziraphale’s side. “Oh, right. That old thing. I nearly forgot I had it.”  
  
“You kept it,” Aziraphale said wonderingly. “You- you went back for it, you got it, and you kept it, all these years.”  
  
He turned around to face Crowley, who was standing not two feet away, his hand rubbing at the back of his neck, an embarrassed expression on his face. He let his hand drop as he took in the one on Aziraphale’s.  
  
“You too?”  
  
Aziraphale was suddenly quite glad for the cavernous nature of Crowley’s flat. If there had been less of an echo, if there had been more in it to muffle the sound, he might not have heard.  
  
“Of course,” he said. “You trusted me to save you, and then you saved my books. We started talking again. We started working together again. I- I remember that night quite fondly.”  
  
For a moment they merely stood there, gazing at one another. Then, finally, Crowley cleared his throat and wrenched his eyes away as he turned back around towards the kitchen. “Right, so! Drinking.”  
  
Aziraphale didn’t follow him right away. He stood there for a moment, and then, with all due worship, let his fingertips graze the stone wings.  
  
There was _devotion_: the artist who had carved this piece had believed very strongly, and had wanted their belief to come across in the shape of the eagle about to take flight. There was _loving-kindness_: this lectern had often stood as a focus for a community which had drawn together out of more than obligation, and had been bound together by more than judgement. There was _grace_: vows made and kept with such perfect faith that they had sunk into the stone and stayed there.  
  
And above it all, like a particularly thick patina, there was _love_: the very same love that had driven Crowley into That Church, and the very same love that had risen out of Aziraphale in answer.  
  
Crowley couldn’t sense love, not the way Aziraphale or any angel could. He could only sense it the way a human would be able to: in word, and in deed. Aziraphale had devoted a lot of time and energy to speaking quietly and keeping his movements subtle, but here was the lectern anyway.  
  
Humans had this story about eagles- well, they had come up with a lot of stories about eagles over the years, but one story in particular came to Aziraphale’s mind just then. They were supposed to be able to stare into the sun- into the source of all light- and not flinch away from it.  
  
Aziraphale let his fingertips drop from the stone, and he followed Crowley into the kitchen.  
  
Crowley had deposited the bottle of Entre Deux Mers on the kitchen table and was hurriedly emptying his cabinets of still more bottles.  
  
“This is a tad excessive, don’t you think?” he asked, hoping it sounded more like a joke to Crowley’s ears than it did to his.  
  
“It really, really is not,” Crowley said flatly.  
  
“Well,” Aziraphale said, watching as he placed the bottles on the table and then went back to the cabinets for me. “If we’re going to get this drunk, maybe we should sit down. I don’t suppose you have a couch?”  
  
Crowley paused in the act of ransacking his own kitchen and looked up at him.  
  
“A settee?” Aziraphale suggested. “A futon, perhaps?”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Crowley replied. There was a slight whisper as something of the kind appeared in the next room over, and Crowley’s kitchen table transformed itself into a cart with wheels. “Lay on, MacDuff,” Crowley said as he began to push. He said it so grimly that Aziraphale couldn’t tell whether he’d meant it with the original intent or not.

Crowley had manifested a dark faux leather couch that stood out like a sore thumb in the sanitized whiteness of his flat, and a block of glass to serve as a table which seemed entirely in keeping with the overall aesthetic of the place. They were currently using it as a footrest as they did a very good impression of being relaxed: shoes off, ties loosened, bottles passed between them.  
  
Neither of them could stand to keep quiet, and neither of them could quite stop themselves from circling around the events of Monday night, and neither of them could quite bring themselves to speak of it directly. The result was a lot of contextless sentence fragments they neither questioned nor provided answers for.  
  
“One of my Wildes!”  
  
“And why does the Lord of the Files feel the need to sing along to Bohemian Rhapsody every time anyway?”  
  
“How do you even get to mulled cider from tea?”  
  
“Then you just get stuck making small talk with Mammon of all beings until the meeting starts.”  
  
It all amounted to the same thing. They were on opposite sides, neither of their sides were particularly forgiving, and so it didn’t matter how right it felt to sit here, side by side. It didn’t matter what Aziraphale felt, watching Crowley’s black-clad feet brush against the cream and robin’s egg blue Argyll patterned socks his wore. There would always be that threat hovering over them, ruining any semblance of peace they might have.  
  
It took him a while, but eventually he realized that neither of them were speaking, and the silence was beginning to press upon them from all sides. He rallied himself to say… something, though what he was going to say he didn’t quite know, when Crowley spoke instead.  
  
“Kinaiceyorings!” was, charitably, a decent rendering of what came out of his mouth.  
  
Aziraphale, who was generally quite good at deciphering Crowley’s non-word verbalizations, gave himself a moment before deciding that he really was too drunk to decode that. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
Crowley took a deep breath and another finger of bourbon before trying again. “Can I see your wings?”  
  
“Oh!” Aziraphale said, a little startled. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it certainly had not been that. “That’s- I- why?”  
  
“Please?” Crowley said. It wasn’t a word he would normally use, and it was the second time that night Aziraphale had made him say it.  
  
“All right,” Aziraphale agreed.  
  
He stood, and then shucked off his jacket, taking a few tipsy steps away from the couch and the various bottles scattered about. One convenience of Crowley’s flat being so empty was that he needn’t worry about hitting anything as he let his wings manifest, stretched out to their full span.  
  
He heard Crowley come up behind him. He thought he could feel the heat of his hand hovering over his left wing, and the shudder of his breath on the nape of his neck, but then again it might have been his imagination.  
  
“It’s all healed up, then?” Crowley asked. “Your wing?”  
  
Oh. Of course he’d been worried about that.  
  
“Good as new,” Aziraphale promised him. “The Archangel Israfil herself came down to fix it.”  
  
“Israfil?”  
  
“The Archangel of Healing,” Aziraphale explained.  
  
Crowley was standing quite close behind him, he was certain of it now. He could feel how he stilled suddenly, forgetting to breathe along with all those other little ticks they had picked up to more easily pass as human.  
  
“Good,” he said at long last, his breathing resuming. “I’m glad they sent someone at least halfway competent to see to your injuries.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Crowley was standing quite close. A little pocket of warmth had gathered in the space between their bodies.  
  
“I’m surprised she didn’t set your feathers to rights,” Crowley continued. “She was always really fussy about that sort of thing when I knew her.”  
  
“Oh?” Aziraphale managed.  
  
“Yeah, yours are looking a little disheveled right now. Which is, you know, totally understandable under the circumstances but I’m surprised she didn’t offer to straighten things out for you.”  
  
Probably she hadn’t offered because she could sense how uncomfortable he was- or, perhaps, because she didn’t feel it appropriate to offer that to someone who’d been violated. Most likely it had been some combination of the two. Before Aziraphale could attempt to put this into words Crowley continued bravely forward. “I could take care of that for you. If you like.”  
  
Aziraphale would very much like. That was the problem. “If you like,” he echoed back.  
  
“Yeah, if-” Crowley caught himself before they could get trapped in a loop of offering the same words to one another. “I need a yes, if you want me to groom your wings, Aziraphale.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded jerkily.  
  
“That’s not a yes,” Crowley said, and pulled back just a bit.  
  
“It’s a-” Aziraphale swallowed thickly. “It’s a _I Don’t Know How I’m Going To Leave Here Already_. I want to- I want you. To do that. I want a lot of things. I don’t know if I should say yes to them. I don’t know _how_.”  
  
For a long moment Crowley said nothing, but neither did he retreat further, which was good. Aziraphale was not altogether certain that he would not discorporate, if Crowley were to touch his wings, but he didn't want him to pull away either.

That was the problem, right there. Somehow, in spite of everything, he still _wanted_.  
  
“You’ll say goodbye,” Crowley said decisively. “That’s how you’ll leave. I’ll be asleep probably. No, I’ll _definitely_ be asleep, no doubt about that, this is-” He made a noise that was probably supposed to be a laugh. “-this is too much _emotion_ for me. The moment I hit the pillow I’m going to be out until Tuesday at the earliest. So, I’ll be out cold, and you just- you just poke your head in when you’re ready to leave and you say goodbye, and then you leave, angel. No need to make a fuss about it.”  
  
“All right,” Aziraphale said quietly. He cleared his throat. “That is- yes. I’d quite like it, if you were to groom my wings. I’ve heard it’s quite nice, when someone you care for is doing it.”  
  
Normally, Crowley would take issue with the word nice, but he let it pass tonight. “I’ll be gentle.”  
  
Aziraphale’s vision blurred for a moment. He blinked rapidly, and willed himself steady. “I never doubted that for a moment, my dear.”  
  
He heard the demon swallow. Crowley was standing so close he could very nearly feel it too.  
  
Normally he’d have put some kind of psychic defense up before allowing this to be done, but of course, normally he did this with a fellow angel. It wasn’t the done thing, of course, but he’d always found it easy enough to excuse _Oh, I’ve been on Earth for a such a long time, it rather gets stuck to you after a while. I wouldn’t want to burden you with all that muck, and I’m quite sure you don’t wish to be burdened._ His wings were not wholly a physical construct, after all. They were as much spiritual and metaphysical as they were bone and feather. Touching his wings without defenses might allow whichever angel agreed to help him to discern that he had quite a few feelings which an angel should not have. He’d put up defenses on Monday night as well, even more strongly than usual, but of course that hadn’t been a matter of grooming. When he’d taken his wings out, he’d been fighting.  
  
It didn’t even occur to him to put defenses in place before allowing Crowley to touch him. He’d already told him his last great secret. What else was there after that?  
  
Quite a lot, as he discovered at the first deliberate touch of Crowley’s hand to his wing. There was a tide of love, flowing from Aziraphale and ebbing from Crowley, feeding into one another in an endless crash of waves. And there was an echo, nearly lost in the cacophony, of all the desires Aziraphale tried so hard to keep buried where they couldn’t hurt anyone.  
  
He’d jerked his wings forwards before it could quite register that Crowley’s desires were a part of that echo as well.  
  
“_Oh,_” Crowley said, sounding a little punch drunk. When Aziraphale turned around, he saw that he looked a little punch drunk too.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hands wringing themselves over and over again so he wouldn’t reach out and touch. “I didn’t know the transference would be that strong. I didn’t know it _could_ be that strong.”  
  
“Yeah, no kidding,” Crowley muttered. He’d taken his sunglasses off at some point. Aziraphale was suddenly quite aware of how vulnerable it made him. “I haven’t. I haven’t actually been able to do that for a while.”  
  
“Groom someone’s wings?” Aziraphale ventured.  
  
“What? _No!_ Crowley said, with such vehemence that Aziraphale was taken aback. “It’s- look let’s not get into the politics of wing grooming in Hell, it’s exhausting and not the point. The point is. The point is the love. Sensing love. I haven’t been able to do that, for a while.” He took a deep breath, and added quietly. “Not when it hasn’t been coming from me.”  
  
Aziraphale’s hands were not wringing so much as clutching tightly to one another. “Oh,” he said, quite overtaken with guilt.  
  
_I’m sorry,_ he wanted to say. _I’m sorry I let you think you were alone in this. I thought it would keep you safe._  
  
He hadn’t managed that either.  
  
And then something truly mortifying occurred to him. If Crowley had been sensing love the same way Aziraphale could sense love, then that echo, when Aziraphale had been able to sense desire…  
  
“Crowley,” he said slowly. “Can you… sense my desires?”  
  
“Er… yeah? Demon, remember?” He pointed to his own face. “Sort of comes with the territory.”  
  
“You’ve been able to do that the entire time,” Aziraphale realized, his face flaming. “Dear _Lord_.”  
  
Crowley spluttered out a laugh.  
  
“Sorry, sorry, I just-” He waved a hand through the air, still giggling between every other word. “I didn’t realize that you didn’t know.”  
  
“Well,” Aziraphale said, trying to regain his footing. “Fair’s fair. I’ve been sensing your love for roughly six thousand years.”  
  
Crowley’s giggling abruptly died.  
  
“It’s- I can sense that you want things,” he said, looking embarrassed. “And you want a lot of things, angel, seriously, it’s exhausting sometimes, how much you want. And I can tell, broadly speaking, what kind of sin you could be led into with those desires: gluttony, covetousness, envy, greed, wrath… lust. I can’t tell automatically tell what it is you specifically desire, not without prying in deeper?”  
  
He wasn’t quite asking a question, but Aziraphale understood what he was getting at.  
  
“I also can’t generally tell who or what the recipient of the love in question is- or any of the emotions I can sense, for that matter. If the love is well-established enough, I can sense it without being able to pinpoint an origin, even,” Aziraphale explained. “With you it’s clearer, but only because I’ve known you for so long. It’s- well. I suppose it’s not dissimilar to how you can sometimes make a dinner selection for me while I’m still agonizing over the menu.” He couldn’t help but get the impression that he was explaining it rather badly, but he felt compelled to continue. “It’s not like an Effort. I can’t just turn it off, not completely. It’s- after nearly six thousand years, it’s become impossible not to notice that the thing you love is me.” He very nearly laughed, but he swallowed the impulse. It would have been an ugly sound. “It’s literally impossible. Believe me, I have tried. This- this would have all been much _safer_, if I could make myself believe that you would be able to just walk away without pain. It would _feel_ safer, at least.”  
  
Crowley didn’t say anything. Aziraphale was expecting him to. Crowley was always the one who pushed, who called out, and who spoke his mind. Crowley was always the brave one, and Crowley was the one who could allow himself to be angry.  
  
Aziraphale was the one who had made himself cold and aloof, the one who had chosen again and again to deny what they were. Crowley had every right to be angry with him, and then some. If there was a monster in this room, it certainly wasn’t him.  
  
But Crowley didn’t say anything. He simply took a step forward, his chest nearly touching Aziraphale’s, and after a moment’s pause let his fingers sink into his feathers.  
  
It wasn’t less intense this time, so much as Aziraphale was better braced for it. After a moment to adjust, he came to the opinion that it wasn’t that they were doing anything particularly strange, or that something out of the ordinary was happening. It was, rather, that they were both a bit raw, emotionally speaking, and both a bit more tired of holding themselves back from one another. Also, they were a bit drunk, which probably didn’t help with maintaining boundaries. Half the fun of being drunk was being able to quiet the part of him that always worried that he was too close, at least some of the time, with at least some things. And now there were no boundaries between them at all.  
  
Some psychic transference was normal when grooming one another’s wings, of course. Usually, Aziraphale got little tidbits of gossip, visions of more paperwork than even he could handle without going mad, and, occasionally, if he was lucky, he might glean a little bit of secondhand peace from someone who had quite forgotten there was anything but. He gave very little back in return, even when he was the one with his hands in someone else’s wings. Books, generally: he was always careful to think about his books, while this was happening.  
  
This was different. There were things he’d come to know about Crowley already, of course. _He likes going out to eat with me because he likes watching me enjoy myself._ There were things he could have guessed. _He thinks I look good in robin’s egg blue._ And there were things he hadn’t known and wouldn’t have guessed in a million years. _I sometimes make a particularly undignified giggle, and he **cherishes** being able to elicit that from me._  
  
“Do you know,” Crowley said. His voice was a little rough around the edges, like he’d just woken up. “I really thought that you just might have a thing for the waiters’ uniforms?”  
  
Aziraphale’s eyes had closed, at some point, but he opened them once more to squint at Crowley. “I- what?”  
  
Crowley laughed. “You jussst- I can feel that you want ssssomething, when we’re out eating. Sssomeone. I didn’t- I didn’t think it was me.”  
  
“Well, my dear, you can feel free to assume it’s always you from now on,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I got that.”  
  
They were standing very close together, their faces nearly touching. And then they did touch, forehead to forehead. One slight change in angle was all it would take for them to kiss.  
  
It would be, objectively speaking, a terrible idea for them to kiss. There were a great many reasons why, the danger that would never pass and the horror that was not yet a week gone being only two of them. Aziraphale was quite certain that he would not object, however. He held himself very still, and waited to see what Crowley would do.  
  
Eventually, Crowley stepped away. He cleared his throat. “Right. Well, turn around. Let me get a good look at what I’m working with.”  
  
That was almost certainly for the best. Aziraphale shoved the little twinge of disappointment he felt towards his mental pit, and was a bit surprised to find that it worked.  
  
_It’s definitely for the best,_ Aziraphale chided himself. _What are you even thinking, imagining that you could start something like that now?_

Crowley took care of his wings with the same friendly professionalism Arthur had used to take care of his hair. It wasn’t long before bits of dead, broken feathers began to litter the floor, very nearly blending in with the whiteness of the tiles beneath his feet. There were more primaries than he would have expected, considering that his ulna had been the bone that had broken- probably the stress was kicking him into an early molt.

“Don’t Fall,” Crowley said abruptly.

“Beg pardon?” Aziraphale asked.

“Don’t Fall,” Crowley repeated.

“Well, I certainly don’t intend to,” Aziraphale told him.

“Yeah, well, take that off your best case scenario list, then,” Crowley said gruffly. He was still grooming, easing each feather into alignment. “Falling is- it’s _bad_, okay? I don’t just mean the pain. It’s- it drains you. Makes you weak. You saw with- with Innahon, and the others. Couldn’t even pick themselves off the floor, could they?”

“No,” Aziraphale confirmed.

“Yeah, well. It’d go worse for you,” Crowley said grimly. “If Michael were to do it, you wouldn’t be collapsed on your bookshop floor. She’d send you all the way down to Hell.”

Aziraphale didn’t quite know how to react to this information beyond shrugging. Yes, he’d rather thought Falling would send him into Hell. He’d even prayed for that to be the case.

This was not the reaction Crowley wanted. “If she thought it was because of me- if she did it because I’d tempted you- she’d probably aim right for Asmodeus' realm. That’s Lust, angel. Dante's Second Circle. It’s where they keep the incubi and succubi and really twisted human souls who raped during their lives. You don’t want to be all alone and immobilized in that sort of company.”

“I don’t intend to Fall,” Aziraphale repeated.

“Promise me,” Crowley begged. “Promise me you won’t. Because the only thing I could do to even slightly mitigate the pain they’d put you through would be to try to _lay claim_ to you. And even if I succeeded, they’d want proof. They’d want to see for themselves that I hated you, that I was willing to hurt you to keep you under control. And a lot of them, they wouldn’t just sit there and watch. They wouldn't just have suggestions. They'd have worse. They’d- they’d want to participate, and I wouldn’t be able to deny them. So, I need you to promise me that you won’t Fall.”

Aziraphale’s throat worked uselessly. Why was it that every time Crowley asked for something, it was something he couldn’t give him? “I can’t do that,” he said at long last.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said as he withdrew his hands from Aziraphale’s wings, a low warning tone in his voice.

“If I am to be given the choice between your death and my Fall again, my answer remains unchanged,” Aziraphale snapped. “And I don’t see that it will change, Crowley. No matter what. Not even-”

Not even The Apocalypse would change that. Not even The Last War. Not even The End, as predestined and written and bloody inevitable as the entire Great Plan was.

_Oh no,_ Aziraphale thought, with sudden horror. _I’m **fucked**._

He cut the rest of that thought off at the neck, and threw the headless corpse of it down into his mental pit, seeing as that was functional again.

“Did you not hear a word I just said?” Crowley demanded.

“I heard,” Aziraphale said. “And I wouldn’t- I wouldn’t ask that of you. Especially- especially not now. You can just wait it out. I mean, they’d have to get bored of me eventually, right?”

For a long moment, Crowley made no reply.

“Idiot,” he said fondly, bowing his head to rest it against the back of Aziraphale’s own. The demon’s breath tickled at his nape. “You- it never fails to astound me, how someone so smart can be such a blessed _moron_.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, and then stopped. He had no idea what to say.

“Then again, maybe I’m an idiot too,” Crowley continued. “I could feel how badly you wanted me to be safe. I don’t mean the transference. I mean that night. Monday. I could tell. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell how much you wanted them not to hurt me, even when that meant they were hurting you instead. I should know that you want me safe above- above all of that.”

“I couldn’t manage it though, could I?” Aziraphale said. “It doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I _can’t_ keep you safe. I can’t protect you from anything. All I can do is try to hurt you less, and that’s not good enough. It’s not. You should be protected.”

“I think you’re forgetting who it is who keeps getting you out of the ridiculous situations you keep getting yourself into,” Crowley said. He was clearly trying to tease, but couldn’t quite manage the right sort of sly, lighthearted tone teasing required. “Do you remember the Bastille? Because I sure do.”

“Technically, that wasn’t the Bastille,” Aziraphale couldn't help but point out. “That was torn down a couple years prior to my crepe craving turned arrest.”

“You were in a French prison waiting to have your head guillotined off,” Crowley grumbled. “It was the Bastille in spirit.”

“It also would have meant a few moments’ unpleasantness and a few years of paperwork,” Aziraphale reminded him. “If Heaven decided to execute me, there wouldn’t be much either one of us could do about it. And if Hell ever caught up to you-”

“It still wouldn’t be as bad as what they would do to you, if you Fell,” Crowley interrupted stubbornly. “Death would be a mercy, Aziraphale, and my lot doesn’t do mercy.”

“Nor does mine, when it comes to traitors,” Aziraphale said. “Which, as far as Heaven is concerned, I already am. The moment they learn that Innahon’s reports were at least partially right, I’m done for.”

“Tschew,” Crowley hissed, sounding pained.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He turned around, tucking his wings in as he did. Crowley looked pained as well. Aziraphale took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m so terribly sorry, dearest. Unless you feel like we could go our separate ways, I don’t see that there’s anything for it but to continue on as we have been, and hope we’re able to keep ahead of them.”

Crowley stared down at their hands, and then at Aziraphale’s face. He nodded. “We’re supposed to be getting drunk.”

“We are drunk,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“We’re standing upright, that’s not drunk enough. We’re not drunk enough.” He jerked his hand back. “Come on, angel, we’ve barely made a dent in my collection.”

Aziraphale watched as Crowley stalked back over to the couch and threw himself back on it, trying not to look dreadfully upset and failing miserably. He hunched in on himself a bit. “Perhaps I should leave?” he suggested.

“What? No!” Crowley scrunched his face in annoyance. “Stop being such an idiot and come over here.”

Aziraphale went over there. Whether he stopped being an idiot was probably a matter best left uncontemplated.

He sat down gingerly on the far end of the couch. Crowley handed him a bottle of something, careful not to let their fingers touch.

“It gets easier,” Aziraphale said, after several minutes had passed and the silence had grown unbearable. “Not reaching out.”

“I _know_, Aziraphale,” Crowley said. He tried to make it snap, but he sounded too tired to pull it off.

_It’s different when you know the other person wants you to reach out to them._ He thought it, but didn’t say it. It would have been such a cruel thing to dangle in front of Crowley, when he knew that it wouldn’t matter how badly he wanted the be able to touch the demon. His reaction would be the same as if he didn’t want Crowley’s touch: to flinch away in terror of being found out.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead.

“Stop apologizing, angel,” Crowley said. “You’re trying to protect me. You’ve been trying to protect me. I get that. _It’s not your fault._”

“I keep hurting you, though,” Aziraphale said. “And I don’t want to. I’d rather do anything else. But I can’t figure out how to stop.”

Crowley reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He should have flinched from it, but alcohol dulled that instinct just as surely as centuries of fear had instilled it. He should have shrugged it off, in the next moment, but he couldn’t summon the energy. What did it matter? If anyone whose disapproval could matter saw them sitting together in the same room, they would be doomed anyway.

“You’ve been hurting yourself too,” Crowley said. “You have. You did. For me.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes again. “I just want you safe,” he said. Every time he said it, or thought it, or rephrased it, it sounded flimsier. He wanted Crowley to be safe, which was why he’d walked out of the bookshop, where he’d raped Crowley, and why he’d sat with him under the open sky and told him the thing he’d been longing to hear would likely destroy them both, and why he’d then followed him back to his home, where he doubtlessly kept the holy water- one of the very few substances that could destroy him- Aziraphale had given him all those years ago. Yes. That’s what all his wanting had accomplished. “I should go,” he said again. He wasn’t talking about just leaving Crowley’s home. “I should. Then they’d have no reason to-”

“Yeah they would,” Crowley said. “No you, no Arrangement. No Arrangement, my job performance takes a nosedive. I barely managed on my own after we had our spat in 1862, and there were two world wars and a very large empire for me to leech off of. What would I do now? The sun has set on the British Empire, and _everyone_ has nukes. If World War Three went off it would probably destroy the planet, and that’s me out of a job.”

“It’s not like the don’t still have wars, you know,” Aziraphale pointed out, raising his chin a little to look the demon in the eyes. “Without the nukes.”

“Yeah, Downstairs thinks that I had a hand in making the Holocaust happen, the Falklands War isn’t going to cut it after that,” Crowley said. “What would I even put on the paperwork? Oh yes, O Dark Lords of Evil, I made the British sailors sing that song from the Monty Python Jesus movie as their cruisers sank, please place a gold star on my chore chart under- I don’t even know.”

“Blasphemy, I would guess?” Aziraphale suggested.

“There, you see? When you say it, it almost makes sense,” Crowley said, smiling. “The Arrangement still works.”

“That it does,” Aziraphale said, with no small amount of guilty relief.

“So we’ll just- we’ll just keep on as we have been, then. And it’s not going to be exactly safe, and it’s not going to be exactly painless, but it’s what we can do.”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” Aziraphale said, with rather abrupt understanding. It was like giving Crowley the holy water all over again: sickening and terrifying, but better than any of the other alternatives they had.

It wasn’t the right thing to do, of course. Aziraphale was fairly certain that there wasn’t a right thing to do, for all that he knew that there was a right thing to do in Heaven’s eyes: kill Crowley. Unscrew the cap and throw the water over him. Run him through with Innahon’s spear. Smite him now where he sat in all his vulnerability, trusting and brave.

He couldn’t make that choice, much less think it right. The only thing for it was to make sure that Heaven never found out about it, and make sure that Crowley was in the least pain and least danger possible. It was, after all, no less than what Crowley was doing for him.

“You’re the best person I know, Crowley, I hope you know that.”

Crowley very obviously did not know that. His hand dropped from Aziraphale’s shoulder in shock. “What.”

“You are,” Aziraphale insisted. “The very best.”

“No!”

“If we were both human, no one would have any doubts about which of us were better.”

“Yeah, it’s you,” Crowley said, sounding vaguely panicked. “I don’t call you _angel_ because you work for Heaven, angel.” He tried to sneer as he said it, but he mostly just looked quite taken aback.

Aziraphale would have loved to have teased him by saying that he could call Crowley his angel if they were going off of metaphorical terms, but somehow he didn’t think that would be well received.

“My darling demon,” he said instead.

Crowley groaned theatrically and threw himself back on the couch. “No, don’t make it all cutesy,” he retorted, doing a much better job of sneering this time. “I’m a demon, I’m not _cute_. And I’m definitely not darling.” He took a drink, and put his legs back up on the coffee table, hooking one of his ankles over Aziraphale’s foot.

Even without the danger, it was nothing short of a miracle that Crowley would want to touch him, after everything. It might never be more than this- it might almost always be less than this- but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t _enough_.

“The thing is,” Aziraphale said, much later. “I would love to promise you that I won’t Fall.”

“So what’s stopping you, then?” Crowley asked.

“It wouldn’t be a real promise,” Aziraphale said. “I’d know from the word _go_ that I couldn’t keep it.”

“So?” Crowley repeated. “People make promises they don’t keep all the time.”

“I don’t!” Aziraphale protested indignantly. “And besides, it’s one thing, when you mean to keep your word and something unexpected comes up and makes you break it. And it’s another when you know for a fact that you can’t keep your promise and go ahead and make it anyway.” He tilted the bottle he’d been working on back. It was several seconds before he realized that the bottle was empty. “I want to promise you that I won’t Fall. I want to promise you all sorts of things.”

“Do you now?” Crowley asked.

“You know that I do,” Aziraphale replied. It took him a few moments to select a bottle which both still had liquid in it and wouldn’t require a miracle to open. “There are so many things I wish I could promise you, my dear.”

They sat there in silence for a time, their legs intertwined on the coffee table. Then a thought suddenly occurred to Aziraphale. “Whither thou goest!”

“What?”

“I could make you that promise- mostly, that part of it, at least.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For whither thou goest, I will go,” Aziraphale said confidently. “I mean- we have our fights, sometimes. Our divergent assignments. But we always find our way back to one another. And as long as it’s possible, I think. I think we always will. So even if I can’t promise you the rest of it, I can promise you that.”

“The rest of what?”

“_For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God_,” Aziraphale recited. “That’s the whole thing.”

Crowley gave him a look that might charitably be described as ‘gobsmacked’.

“Now, obviously, we cannot share lodgings,” Aziraphale explained. “Our respective head offices might be a tad oblivious as to the finer points of Earthly matters, but even they would notice that.”

“Was that a marriage vow you just recited there?”

“And my people and your people can never be the same people again, and that’s pretty much why we’re in this mess at all.”

“That sounded a lot like a marriage vow, angel.”

“As for the God part, well, obviously we’re going to disagree there,” Aziraphale finished.

“Did you ssssssseriously just vow marriage to me right now?” Crowley hissed urgently.

“No, I just told you why I couldn’t vow marriage to you,” Aziraphale snapped. “Because I can’t keep most of that vow.”

“But _that’s_ your main objection. That you- that we can’t mean those vows because we’d be destroyed if we tried to keep them. That’s- that’s the sticking point for you. Not- not anything else. Just that?”

“Yes?” Aziraphale replied.

Crowley opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Oh. That didn’t come out in the transference?” Aziraphale asked.

“Nope.”

“I’m surprised. That one’s been in there for centuries.”

Crowley made a sound like a car engine trying and failing to start. Aziraphale offered him another, mostly-full bottle to drink.

“Just so we’re clear,” Crowley said after a few moments to collect himself. “It’s not like I can disbelieve in God.”

“In the existence of God, no,” Aziraphale agreed. “In the everything else about God…” His voice trailed off. After a moment he snorted. “Would you like to hear something terrible?”

“I can’t even imagine what that would be at this point,” Crowley replied.

Aziraphale looked him over, trying to gauge his mood. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“And if you don’t tell me, the curiosity will kill me, so go on,” he added with a wave of his hand.

“I still believe that there’s a Plan,” Aziraphale said. “I still think that this- that _all_ of this, _even_ this- is driving at something.”

For a long moment Crowley said nothing. And then he smiled, just a little bitterly. “Do you want to hear something worse?” he asked, adding before Aziraphale could respond “So do I.”

“You do?”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, this Plan seems just pointlessly cruel in places,” Crowley elaborated. “I really feel like She could have stood to explain some of it to us, you know, put at least part of it out for peer review or whatever.” He took another swig of his drink. “But I also feel like I’ve contrived enough ‘coincidences’ to be able to tell when I’m in one. When _we’re_ in one.”

“And what sort of coincidence are we in, do you think?”

“Whatever keeps us on Earth,” Crowley said. “I mean, come on, an angel like you and a demon like me? We’re good, and our bosses are idiots-” He paused, but Aziraphale wasn’t feeling up to defending the Archangels today. “-I mean, they’re just absolute morons. Blessed babbling buffoons from Gabriel right on down to Beelzebub!”

Aziraphale snorted.

“And- and the point-” Crowley frowned, and took another drink. “The point! Is- is- is-”

“Coincidences,” Aziraphale reminded him.

“Yes! Coincidences,” Crowley said. “This can’t be one of them. It can’t. There’s too much- no one is that good, and no one is that much of an idiot, not for nearly six thousand years in a row. We should have been caught before. And it should have stuck.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “I know.”

“So, we’re Somebody’s ace in the hole, clearly. Probably Hers. There’s got to be some kind of Plan,” Crowley continued. “The thing is- you trust Her. You think the Plan’s got to be good.”

Aziraphale nodded. “I do.”

“I don’t. I don’t like this game, and I don’t think I’m going to like how it ends either,” Crowley said. “That’s the difference here, between you and me. You want to trust, and I’ve already been burned.”

“She didn’t give you a choice about Falling, did she?” Aziraphale said. “Michael, I mean.”

“Of course you do,” Crowley muttered, stealing his drink. “No. She didn’t. And she wasn’t _stopped_, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He didn’t think that he could have stopped Crowley’s Fall. He hadn’t known him then. But there had been others. It had been an awful time, just after Lucifer’s exile, almost worse than the War that had followed in its way. Angels just _disappeared_, their names stricken from the rolls and redacted from the reports, never to be so much as whispered about again unless one wished to join in their fate. Aziraphale had told those under his command to keep things battened down, to deny their doubts a voice and their fears a shout. It had worked for most of them, and for the sake of that most as much as his own skin, he hadn’t protested when the few irrepressible sparks he’d had had been removed from the Host.

The lack of recrimination had driven him batty for a time. But, of course, everyone had understood that he’d been afraid. They were afraid too. The stench of it had never quite left Heaven, not in all the time since.

“Don’t be,” Crowley told him. “I didn’t much like Heaven by the time they got around to kicking me out. I don’t think I’d like it any better now.”

“At least with Hell, you know where all the loopholes are,” Aziraphale said.

“Yeah! And, also, at least in Hell you’re allowed to hate your bosses- expected to, even!” Crowley said.

Aziraphale giggled. “I think Gabriel is under the impression that we all love the sound of his voice as much as he does.”

“Yeah, that sounds like the smarmy git,” Crowley said. “Is he still having you make all his appointments on Savile Row?”

“Yes. Yes he is,” Aziraphale said. “I’m surprised he didn’t bring it up when he came to debrief me, now that you mention it.”

Crowley made a grunting noise that might have been a laugh. “What time is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale said, patting down his vest until he found his fob watch. By the time he’d pulled it out and flipped it open, Crowley had miracled a side table complete with digital clock in being.

“Yours is four hours and three minutes off,” Aziraphale told him.

“Ahead or behind?”

“Ahead.”

Crowley blinked and the clock reset itself with a clacking noise that it probably shouldn’t have been able to make. The time was seven past two in the morning.

“Time to sober up?” Aziraphale asked.

“You can, if you want,” Crowley said as he stood. “I’m going to go right to sleep.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said, waving towards the empty bottles littered around. “You’ll have a terrible hangover in the morning.”

“It’s fine. It’ll build character.”

“As someone who just had a rather painful one this past Thursday morning, I can assure you it does not,” Aziraphale said.

“Well, I’ll just sleep through it then,” Crowley called, already sauntering into his bedroom in freshly-transformed pajamas.

Aziraphale sighed, and then sobered up. He took care to sweep his feathers back into the ether, cork up all the bottles and put them back onto the cart. He rolled it back into the kitchen, and spent a moment staring at the identical white cabinets that lined the kitchen, before admitted that he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed from there. He ended up just leaving the drinks cart, fully laden, where it had previously sat when it had been a table. Crowley could decide where they went when he woke up tomorrow. Or Tuesday morning, perhaps.

He put on his shoes and jacket once more, and nearly made it to Crowley’s bedroom. He hovered outside his door for a time, and then backtracked. There were some glasses in his kitchen- novelty items, mostly, but they would hold water. Aziraphale filled one up from the tap and then brought it with him into Crowley’s bedroom.

The demon was doing a very poor impression of a sleeping person. Aziraphale decided against humoring him.

“You should at least drink some water before you fall asleep,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley grumbled angrily and turned over so his back was to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale sighed. There was, of course, no bedside table for him to put the glass down upon. He settled down gingerly on the edge of the bed, glass in hand. “My dear-”

“What?” Crowley snapped. “Are you going to start stroking my hair now? Offer to stay and cuddle until I fall asleep?”

Aziraphale took too long to respond. There was the sound of liquid flowing as, in the kitchen, the bottles refilled themselves with all the alcohol Crowley had imbibed. He was completely sober as he sat up and faced Aziraphale.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything.

“We couldn’t make a habit of it,” Aziraphale said at last.

“No, right.”

“By which I mean, it could never happen again, Crowley.”

“Yep. Got that.”

“But if, I mean- if you’d want to. I could stay.”

Crowley didn’t make any sort of verbal reply, but the cup in Aziraphale’s hand disappeared.

“Only if you want,” Aziraphale continued. “And- it couldn’t be the whole time. Especially not if you intend to sleep all the way until Tuesday.”

“Until I fall asleep?” Crowley repeated.

“Yes. I could manage that I think,” Aziraphale said. “I mean- anyone who might want to make a fuss about it, well. If they’re paying close enough attention to know when you’re asleep, then they must have known that they’d have had less of a fight on their hands when we were both drunk.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Crowley said. “You’ll, uh. You’ll get your suit all wrinkled, you know.”

“Well, I’ll take off my jacket first,” Aziraphale said.

“Your trousers, then.”

“I’ve maintained them for over one hundred years, I know how to use a hot iron.”

“Did you know those run on electricity now?”

Aziraphale huffed and rolled his eyes.

Crowley took a deep breath and turned down the covers. “On your own time, angel,” he said, laying back with a desperate sort of casualness.

Aziraphale nodded. He stood, undid his bow tie, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He took off his jacket once more, and then ran into a problem: there was nothing in Crowley’s bedroom save for the bed, and therefore nowhere to hang his jacket.

“Hmm,” he said.

Crowley lifted his head up, and identified the problem immediately. “You just can’t put your jacket on the floor, can you?”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “But, I think I have an idea.”

He concentrated, remembering Louis Philippe and the Hall of Mirrors, a trip to France he’d hoped would assure him of coming stability and instead convinced him that the whole country was going to start coming up guillotines again. He had gotten some crepes unmolested though, so it had gone better than the last time they’d been in France.

It would be easy enough to explain, should anyone from Heaven ask about this particular miracle. He did have a fair bit of renovating to do, and he doubted very much if anyone who might check his miracles would be able to tell the difference between whatever armchair he might purchase and the throne he was manifesting from memory for Crowley.

The throne materialized with a pop. Crowley propped himself up on his elbows to get a good look at it.

“There,” Aziraphale said, draping his jacket over the back. “And now you don’t have to rob a department store.”

“Thwarting my wiles again, angel?” Crowley asked.

“No, this is a freebie,” Aziraphale said. “I believe I owe you one.”

Crowley sat up a bit more. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said seriously. “None of that-”

“For _Hamlet_,” Aziraphale interrupted.

Crowley blinked at him.

“I know you said that one was on you, but I can’t help but feel like you went above and beyond with it,” Aziraphale added.

Crowley laughed, and flopped back down on the bed. “Too right I did. And if you expect one measly chair to make a dent in _Hamlet_-”

“It is a _throne_ from _Versailles_!”

“That barely covers that bit with the gravediggers, then. Barely, just barely, covers the fact that now every time there’s a skull on the loose some idiot will pick it up and go _Alas, poor Yorick!_. Barely. Just a little fig leaf over that part of Act Five.”

It was very normal in the best possible way- the normal they could have when Aziraphale was feeling brave and Crowley wasn’t feeling defensive. It made it easier to sit down on the edge of the bed again, take off his shoes, and slip under the covers besides Crowley, no matter how abnormal that was.

For a long time they merely lay there, side by side and barely touching. Then, suddenly, Crowley reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly.

“Fuck thisss,” he hissed with quiet vehemence.

“Beg pardon?” Aziraphale asked.

“There’s got to be a way out of this,” Crowley said. “There has to be. There has to be some way for us to be together without fear.”

“Well, if you figure it out, be sure to let me know,” Aziraphale replied tiredly.

“I will,” Crowley said, sounding almost solemn. “You just- you’ll be worried about keeping us safe, I know you will, I don’t think I could stop you-”

“At this point I don’t think _I_ could stop me,” Aziraphale said.

“-and I’ll find a way out. For both of us. Together. Okay?”

This was his vow, Aziraphale realized. His _whither thou goest_. He shifted a little closer to the demon, and twisted their conjoined hands a bit so he could squeeze back.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yes.”

“Good,” Crowley said.

It took a long time, but eventually the demon seemed to drop off a bit. Little by little, his hand slackened in Aziraphale’s, and his body when limp next to his. Just when he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t leave, Crowley shuffled around and threw an arm and a leg over him.

_Oh, Lord,_ Aziraphale thought, barely daring to breathe.

After a moment Crowley inhaled sharply and jerked back a bit.

“Oh!” he said. “That’s um. I’m sorry, I just, I-”

“It’s quite all right, my dear. I don’t mind being your pillow, truly,” Aziraphale said. They were only going to get this one time, after all.

“Oh. Well, good.” After a moment, Crowley settled back down against him, more deliberately.

“I shift around a lot in my sleep,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale nodded, a little lost for words.

“Sometimes I end up on the ceiling,” he added.

“Do you?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley nodded against his chest.

Carefully, Aziraphale pulled his arm out from under the demon, and wrapped it around him, his hand straying to Crowley’s hair.

“Is this all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, his voice rough. When Aziraphale ran his fingers through his hair he shivered, and Aziraphale was abruptly glad that he hadn’t buried his face in the crook of his neck again.

“I could get away with another miracle, I think,” Aziraphale said. “To make sure you had good dreams. Not to put you to sleep, but just to keep the nightmares at bay.”

Crowley let out a long, slow breath and seemed to melt against him, and Aziraphale knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he’d managed to do that much right. “Yeah. That would be good, thanks.”

Aziraphale lifted his fingertips to Crowley’s temple, and let the miracle flow into him.

They didn’t speak again that night. Aziraphale didn’t sleep. He couldn’t have, even if that had been his usual habit. He was torn between the innate desire to memorize the feeling of Crowley in his arms, and the knowledge that he would probably be better off never recalling this moment.

Eventually, Crowley fell asleep. He did, in fact, float up to the ceiling, taking all the blankets with him and making a sort of demon-blanket cocoon there. Aziraphale allowed himself a moment to smile fondly up at him, and then he too got up- the more mundane way.

His shoes were put on, and then his jacket, and then his bowtie. It was time to leave. _You’ll say goodbye,_ Crowley had told him, but now that the moment was here, he found that goodbye sounded far too final.

“May we meet on a better occasion,” he said instead, and then took his leave.


	8. Injustice to the Wage Earner, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's the update with the last chapter: it's being worked on, I was pretty well wiped out by the retail hell season but should be able to recover and have more time to write now, and I would estimate that I would finish with it some time before the end of January. It'll be taking place immediately post-Apocalypse, and there will be actual comfort, I promise!
> 
> So, chag sameach, happy holidays, and may the new year be better than the old to us all.

It was a long week, before they met up again. It felt strange to think of it that way- they normally saw one another a few times a year at most, and that was in and of itself a new and recent development, not even fifty years old yet. A week should not have felt like a long time, and yet it did.  
  
Aziraphale kept himself busy. He gave his armchair to Shireen so she would have somewhere comfortable to sit after those long shifts at the hospital, and he gave the rug to Pavel to hang on his wall, miracled whole and with enough of a blessing of happiness to help keep the homesickness at bay for him. Their replacements arrived Wednesday afternoon. He was sure he would manage to grow attached to them sooner or later. He called around, and managed to find someone who did flooring that was willing to stop by Saturday afternoon for an estimate. By a stroke of miraculous fortune, it turned out that they had just lost another job that had left them with more than enough hardwood to cover his sitting room floor, already acclimated and ready to go. Crowley’s work, undoubtedly: Aziraphale paid them extra to finish it as quickly as possible, and offset whatever monetary loss the demon’s work might have incurred. The varnish had dried, come Wednesday morning, and he had his sitting room back before nightfall.  
  
He did a bit of restoration work for an old family Bible, took a contract to appraise a manuscript that was coming up for auction, and went to a few rummage sales- nothing of high quality to be found there, but the money went towards paying for decent funerals, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t find plenty of people in need of Whitman, Sappho, Isherwood, and Woolf, subpar though the editions themselves might be. He went to the Arthur’s again to purchase some of that wonderful cologne, bought a new suit to replace the one lost in all the unpleasantness, got his usual manicure done, and even opened the shop for a time on Thursday.  
  
He opened it at two am and closed it at seven, but the fact remained that he’d opened it. If anyone had come in save for a few ladies of the night hoping for shelter from the rain at about half past three, he might have even considered selling a book. Instead, he made some tea, found that a few umbrellas and trenchcoats had materialized in the lost-and-found box he’d never really used for other people’s lost possessions, and had a spirited discussion about the works of Georgette Heyer, and Regency romances as a whole.  
  
The bottle of pisco remained in his kitchen. He ate out a lot, indulging in his every craving whenever possible, in order to avoid it. Looking at the bottle gave him a funny feeling- though, thankfully, once the armchair situation had been squared away, he wasn’t bothered by any errant thoughts or unwanted memories. The unpleasantness stayed in his mental pit of things he didn’t quite think about, and with luck it would stay there until the End of Days.  
  
The End of Days was, of course, another thing he didn’t quite think about, but no matter.  
  
He took the bottle of pisco with him when he left. Franco’s was one of their regular haunts. They’d long since warded the place to be beneath any form of celestial notice, and being roughly ten minutes’ walk from the park and three from the Ritz, they found the location agreeable to both of them. The family that owned the place were aware- in much the same way that many of Aziraphale’s neighbors were aware- that they were not quite human, but as they tipped well and helped smooth over the odd problem that arose every so often, they overlooked any peculiarities. Which was incredibly convenient, as the food was _excellent_.  
  
Dario, tonight’s maître d'hôtel, was not a member of the Franco family _per se_, but rather the friend of a cousin of one of the older children. He’d been working at the restaurant for somewhere around ten years- long enough to know the drill. A private room, reservation under the name AJ Crowley, yes he was bringing this bottle in with him, and no it was not a slight toward’s Franco’s wine selection in the slightest. There was no reason for Dario to be _jumpy_, but he was.  
  
Aziraphale was, consequently, feeling rather jumpy himself. _They’ve found us out,_ he thinks to himself. _Innahon must have kept records- must have sent reports back to Sandalphon. We only come here once a year, if that, but he must have found out somehow._  
  
The warding they did on public venues was not particularly strong to the determined. It was misdirection, a sleight-of-hand trick he’d come up with while practicing his own tricks for the stage. It would give any celestial power doing a general sweep of the area the impression that nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened at Franco’s, but only if the celestial power in question had no knowledge that they met there, or was not actively surveilling them. If Crowley had been followed here, as Aziraphale had been followed to Elena’s L’Etoile...  
  
He shifted his grip on the bottle. He could use it as a weapon, if need be. Not very effectively, but the private dining room Crowley reserved for them was their usual: the smallest Franco’s has on offer, by which he meant that it comfortably seated fourteen, rather than fifty. Plenty of room to maneuver. More than the bookshop, certainly, though of course if they were armed with spears as well that would be to their advantage, but-  
  
Dario stopped suddenly just outside the door. “Look,” he said, smoothing nervous hands down his legs. “Does Mr. Crowley have a sister?”  
  
That was not even remotely what Aziraphale had thought he was going to say. “What?”  
  
“A sister? Or a close relative that he might get a neck tattoo done with, for some reason?” Dario pressed.  
  
_Oh._ The source of Dario’s nervousness suddenly became clear. “Goodness, no,” Aziraphale told him, laughing a little in sheer relief. “And it’s Ms. Crowley right now, I think you’ll find.”  
  
“So that’s-” Dario snuck a look towards the closed door. “That’s really him? Can you really just do that?”  
  
“I think you’ll find that Crowley does as _she_ pleases,” Aziraphale said, as gently as he could.  
  
“And you’re okay with that?” Dario asked.  
  
“I’d be a very poor sort of person if I tried to dictate who she was,” Aziraphale chided. “And a worse sort of friend.”  
  
“But aren’t you, you know-” Dario gestured wildly at Aziraphale.  
  
“Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on noxious oxide?” Aziraphale suggested. He didn’t mind the presumption. Years ago- centuries, at this point- he’d decided that if Heaven wasn’t going to send a Principality to look after gay people (and bisexual people, and transsexual people, and ever-increasing everyone else who could be said to fall under the label of queer) then he was just going to have to appoint himself to the position. Being accepted as one of the people he was charged to look after was a compliment.  
  
Besides, it was more or less true, for the time being at least: he was, in essence, a gay man. He’d first presented male because it seemed simplest, but the presentation had grown on him to the point where he didn’t really feel like he could be anything else. Not that he didn’t change things up when it suited the task at hand, but he was generally quite quick to change back. It simply didn’t feel _right_ the way being a man did. Basically every human he’d gone to bed with in past three hundred years had been a man as well.  
  
Dario spluttered, and blushed, and _aha_, he wasn’t made uncomfortable by what they were, so much as he was made uncomfortable by the fact that he suspected he had a lot in common with them both.  
  
“I also like classical music, spending a quiet night in, and being driven at significantly less than twice the speed limit,” Aziraphale added kindly. “Crowley is, as always, an exception.”  
  
Dario looked ready to blush himself to death. With the blink of his eye, Aziraphale ensured that one of the less-battered copies of _Orlando_ that he’d recently acquired made it into his bag, along with a business card for A. Z. Fell & Co. If he needed to, he would be able to find his way there. Self-appointed his duties might be, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take them seriously.  
  
He could also have corrected Dario’s assumption as to the nature of their relationship. He could do that any time it came up- which would be less often, now that Crowley was a woman again. As always, he liked the easy illusion it provided- the relationship he might imagine they had, if he could let himself think about such things.  
  
Instead, he let Dario open the door for him, and stepped into the private dining room.  
  
Crowley had grown her hair out: it was piled on top of her head in the heat-frizzed style that seemed so popular with young people these days. She was wearing makeup, dark at the lips and really quite dramatic around the eyes; she was also wearing a leather choker that had pewter tooled into it in the shape of a snake eating its own tail. She wore a familiar black jacket Aziraphale was quite certain he’d seen her wear while she was presenting male, a _very_ tight black shirt, black sheer tights and black pointed boots. The only clothing she wore that wasn’t black was her skirt.  
  
It was a scandalously short skirt, which placed a great deal of Crowley’s long, lean legs on display. Aziraphale noticed this, and promptly buried the notice. He had other reasons to be looking, after all. “Are you wearing tartan, my dear?”  
  
Crowley groaned. “No, don’t say it like that! It’s punk! I’m being punk.”  
  
Aziraphale smiled. Crowley always had such a low, sultry voice as woman. It was really quite pleasant.  
  
“I must confess, I’m not sure of the etiquette here,” he said. “Do punks drink pisco?”  
  
“This one does,” Crowley said, holding out her glass. She’d grown out her nails, Aziraphale noted as he poured, filed them sharp and painted them black.

They had their ritual, never quite explicitly spoken about but tacitly understood as necessary to make these meetings last longer. Dinner first, before any business that needed to be discussed. Drinks during dinner, and after, when Aziraphale had gotten what he needed from the dessert menu. Business came next. Possibly there would be some kind of show afterwards, or else there would be a nightcap at the bookshop, but they weren’t going to be able to risk that tonight.  
  
They arrived separately, and they should leave separately, and they should probably not contact one another until some time after the new year. Such was the way of things.  
  
The food was excellent, but then again, Franco’s had never disappointed them. They started with the burrata with tomato and black olive tapenades: Crowley had one and then before he’d quite realized it, Aziraphale had finished the rest. Aziraphale ordered the honey glazed duck breast, served over baby carrots and button onions, and Crowley stole most of the vegetables from his plate. They finished off the pisco between them as they ate, and then Aziraphale ceded control of the menu to Crowley, who picked out a nicely full-bodied white wine that suited her tastes more, and whispered the order for Aziraphale’s dessert in the ear of the very flustered looking waitress. She nursed her glass while Aziraphale enjoyed an absolutely delightful dessert of chocolate and lime cheesecake topped with rum Chantilly, served with fior di latte ice cream .  
  
They talked: reminiscing about long-ago happenings and people long since dearly (and not so dearly) departed. They also talked about more recent happens, things which they’d forgotten to mention the last time they- well. When last they might have spoken about matters that weren’t potentially life threatening.  
  
“I forgot to mention this before I left for Peru, but you should know that I ran into Raisel recently,” Aziraphale said. “Back towards the beginning of June.”  
  
“No. Raisel Greenblatt?”  
  
“The very same.”  
  
“How’s she doing? Still up and kicking?”  
  
“She’s slowed down a bit, uses a cane to get around,” Aziraphale told her. “Still has a mean right hook, though.”  
  
“How’d you find _that_ out?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Someone tried to snatch her young lady’s purse- that’s still Mildred, by the way.” Crowley had set them up, some years after she and Raisel had come to the inevitable end of their relationship. Aziraphale had always thought that had been rather nice of her, and had even once made the mistake of saying so.  
  
The two lived in a flat above the bakery which served, in Aziraphale’s extremely well-informed opinion, the best rugelach currently available in London and the third best rugelach that had ever been available in London. It was also not terribly far from the Hackney Archives. Consequently, Aziraphale caught sight of them far more often than Crowley did.  
  
“Can you call someone a young lady when they’re pushing eighty?” Crowley asked.  
  
“These things are relative,” Aziraphale said, taking another bite. He closed his eyes for a moment to savor the way the ice cream melted on his tongue, and then opened his eyes again as something occurred to him. “Oh! And they still have that cat!”  
  
“No they do not,” Crowley groaned.  
  
Some years back, Raisel and Midred had been adopted by a gigantic ginger cat they’d assumed was a tom until she’d had kittens. From that moment on, there had only been one name Raisel could think to call her by.  
  
“They do. Anya still has a bit of a temper. Nearly got me on the wrist when I tried to give her a pat.”  
  
“I still can’t believe she named the bloody cat after me,” Crowley grumbled, though Aziraphale could tell that she was still pleased by the fact.  
  
“Speaking of, have you decided on a name for this go around?” Crowley had never quite settled on a first name for human purposes when she was a woman. She claimed it was because women’s names fell out of fashion far more quickly than men’s, but Aziraphale strongly suspected she just hadn’t found anything she liked as much as ‘Anthony’. She’d been Anya during the late 40s, Anita on occasion during the 50s, Antoinette during the 60s and into the 70s (Aziraphale strongly suspected she’d stuck with that one for so long because of the name’s associations with the French Revolution, which had made him frown deeply upon hearing her introduce herself as such for the first time), and though she hadn’t been a woman very often during the 80s, when she had been, she’d been Antonia.  
  
“I’m going to be lazy and just give my full legal name as Antonia J Crowley again,” she replied. “I’ll be going by Toni, though. With an i.”  
  
“Oh, how modern!” Aziraphale said.  
  
“So, you hate it,” Crowley surmised.  
  
“So, I will get used to it,” Aziraphale corrected. “You know I always do, my dear. I presume you still wish me to address you as Crowley when we’re not incognito?”  
  
“Yeah, of course,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Toni’s just for when you’re being Ezra.”

Eventually, Aziraphale finished dessert, and it was time for the business portion of the evening to commence. Apparently, this entailed Crowley shoving all of the dishes over to his side of the table.  
  
“What are you doing?” Aziraphale asked her as he grabbed her still half-full wine glass before it could fall on the floor.  
  
“Making room.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
For an answer, Crowley reached into the large black bag that had been tucked beneath her seat, and pulled out… something that Aziraphale had to squint at for a very long time to place.  
  
“Is that some sort of miniaturized personal computer?” He asked at long last.  
  
“Really, angel,” Crowley said, rolling her eyes. “It’s a laptop. Wave of the future, this is. I thought it was time I got one.”  
  
“Oh, is it one of those newfangled portable computers? The ones that run on batteries?”  
  
“It’s a _laptop_. They’ve been around for years.”  
  
“It looks heavy.”  
  
“Thirteen pounds. It’s not even a stone,” she said, waving off any concern he might have. “Give me a moment to get the thing booted up.”  
  
Aziraphale sat back and waited as Crowley glowered at her ‘laptop’, glasses falling down the bridge of her nose.   
  
“Sober up, do you think?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Absolutely not,” she replied. “Write drunk, and edit sober. That’s the way to do it.”  
  
“Is it?” Aziraphale asked. He took a sip of wine before he remembered that he was holding Crowley’s cup, not his own. “Oh dear.”  
  
Crowley smirked at him. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to steal yours,” she said, already reaching for his glass.  
  
She left a smudge of lipstick on it. There was plenty of lipstick still smudged on the glass Aziraphale held. Undoubtedly, he’d gotten a little on his own lips. He found he did not mind the idea of getting Crowley’s lipstick on him in the slightest.  
  
That was not a thought he should have had.  
  
“Well, I’ll dictate sober, if you don’t mind,” he said, setting down the glass.  
  
“More for me,” Crowley said, as the wine and pisco he’d drunk reappeared in their respective bottles.  
  
After several minutes, the ‘laptop’ was sufficiently prepared. “Right, so: the temptation of Teófilo Hinojal Sinchi.” Crowley said, knocking back the remainder of Aziraphale's drink. “Hit me.”  
  
“He prefers to go by Teo, first of all,” Aziraphale informed her as he refilled what was now her glass.  
  
“And Hell does not give a single flying fuck, seriously, they still call me Crawley half the time,” Crowley said, waving him along. “Give me some details I can use.”  
  
“The actual temptation went off without a hitch,” Aziraphale told her. “I spent a couple days getting a feel for Teo’s life- a bit of a closet case, having all manner of affairs with men behind his wife’s back. They have one adult child, she doesn’t seem to be in contact with them any longer, something Teo clearly feels some guilt over but wouldn’t discuss. Otherwise he spends most of his time on his work. He has a genuine passion for the avant-garde movement of Peruvian modernist literature- he was some wonderfully insightful things to say about Vallejo’s poetry- but he mainly ends up giving the same speech to bored undergraduates day in and day out. It was all rather sad, really. Anyway, he has a liking for blonds. It wasn’t difficult to arrange things so that Pamela- that’s his his wife, Pamela- walked in during the act. It all came down to a minor miracle to make her think that she’d forgotten her pocketbook at home.”  
  
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Have fun?” she asked.  
  
“Now, you know I don’t like to kiss and tell,” Aziraphale replied primly. “Anyway, there was a great deal of shouting and throwing of things, but eventually they both calmed down, and I helped them to talk things through. They’ll be getting a divorce, but I really do feel like they’ll be much happier that way. They’ll certainly be more honest, if only with one another. Who knows, they might even become friends.”  
  
“I can’t tell Hell that,” Crowley protested.  
  
“So, don’t,” Aziraphale told her. “I’m certainly not going to tell my side all the details.”  
  
Crowley grumbled, and held up a finger when he made to continue. “Give me a tick to write that all up and try to make it sound properly demonic. I’m saying I set him up with a tourist, by the way.”  
  
It wasn’t exactly untrue. “Why does your side feel like extra-marital affairs and divorce are automatically damning, anyway?”  
  
Crowley shot him an incredulous look over the top of her sunglasses. “_Thou shalt not commit adultery_? Ring any bells?”  
  
“About as many bells as _Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain_,” Aziraphale said wryly. “That’s not exactly an automatic roasting either. Do you have any idea how often the Archangel Gabriel swears in vain on the name of the Son?" And Gabriel believed _very_ strongly that Jesus was Her son. "It’s less a matter of action and more a matter of taking responsibility for your actions. Besides, all of those commandments are gross oversimplifications. _Thou shalt not promise to cherish, honor, and protect when thou art not capable of keeping thy word_ might have been more accurate.”  
  
The look Crowley gave him in return was… inscrutable. After a moment, she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Honestly? I’m pretty sure we’ve had a guy parked outside the Vatican since it was founded, and as far as anyone Downstairs is concerned, the Pope is still one of _the_ Earthly authorities on what sin is. Does the Pope like divorce and extramarital affairs and same sex relations? No? Then that’s probably something we should have a mandate to encourage.”  
  
“That’s a bit simplistic,” Aziraphale observed.  
  
“Thankfully, so are most demons,” Crowley replied. She tapped away for a moment. Aziraphale wondered how she managed with her nails so long. “Okay, I’m good, give me more details.”  
  
Aziraphale shrugged. “There’s not much more to tell. It was all wrapped up by the morning of the 13th, which is probably all they need to know about the assignment they gave you. Besides, they’re going to be much more interested in the conflict you can now take some credit for. I suppose you’ve heard the news by now?”  
  
“I can honestly say that I haven’t heard about anything that has happened in the last couple of weeks unless it happened right under my nose, Aziraphale,” Crowley said.  
  
Oh. Right. “Well. Hmm. Keeping in mind that, in order for our stories to match, you’ll have to have left Peru some time before I did…”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll sort that all later. Just give me the material to work with,” Crowley told him.  
  
“It’s just as well. I got most of my current information from a young woman at The Gay Hussar yesterday afternoon,” Aziraphale said. He’d gone mainly because he’d wanted to eat something prepared by someone who understood that paprika was not a garnish, and perhaps enjoy some chilled cherry soup before the weather turned cool again, but he’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought to gather some information as well. The Gay Hussar was a favorite watering hole for journalists and politicians alike, and generally a good source of gossip and general insider information, provided one knew how to listen.  
  
Most of the talk had been about Labour Party politics, the continuing fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the reunification of Germany, and the upcoming meeting between the Premier of North Korea and the President of South Korea. But there had been one young woman there who had been newly assigned to the Latin American beat, and she’d been as interested in his recent visit to Peru as he’d been to hear what she’d been told before her upcoming trip to the very same country.  
  
Though he still didn’t quite understand much of her economic jargon. True knowledge of the money market eluded him, beyond certain basics like ‘hyperinflation is bad’. She had talked to him about the decision to float the inti against the American dollar, and all he could picture was one of those new million inti notes thrown on top of a sea of American bills.  
  
“Right, well: while I was in the air, the new President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, announced some austerity policies, including loosening some restrictions on pricing, as well as discontinuing several subsidies. As a result, prices for most foods have tripled, and the price of gasoline is thirty times what it used to be. Fujishock, they’re calling it. People are _very_ upset over it. Not incidentally, this all went against several promises President Fujimori made on the campaign trail.”  
  
“Wow, a politician went back on his promises. I’m shocked,” Crowley said, deadpan.  
  
“Well, you can still use that, can’t you?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Oh, yeah. Definitely,” Crowley assured him. “Do you know how often Ligur brags about corrupting a politician? _Oh Hastur, I’m so evil, I tempted an MP into doing crack cocaine in his office, come and do me against this tombstone_.” She then made a very wet noise with her mouth Aziraphale could only hope was meant to represent two demons with only a vague resemblance to a human shape kissing. “It’s like: did you get Thatcher to do a line off an eighteen year old hooker’s stomach? Did you get pictures of that?”  
  
There was no part of that which he did not find nauseating. “Ew,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“_That_ would be notable,” Crowley continued, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Disgusting, yes, but notable. I could cause some real chaos with pictures like that. If your basic MP from Dundersdale North does crack in his own in his office that’s just _Tuesday_.”  
  
Aziraphale suddenly felt a great deal less like being sober was a wise decision. “Moving swiftly forwards,” he said, pouring himself a fresh glass of pisco. “People have started hoarding food. There was no small amount of riots and looting, and clashes with the police while I was there. Since the prices of gasoline having risen so sharply, a lot of people stayed home, and many of the shops were closed as well. The bus drivers were on strike. There was some talk of calling a general strike, for the day after I left Peru, but according to my source at The Gay Hussar, that fizzled out into nothing.”  
  
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Crowley asked.  
  
“I really couldn’t say,” Aziraphale told her. “So, as you like it, for the purposes of the report.”  
  
“Definitely a bad thing, then,” Crowley decided. She jabbed away at the keyboard for a moment before asking “Can you give me any more details or do I need to skulk around the BBC’s offices?”  
  
“Pamela had some quite strong opinions on the matter,” Aziraphale replied. “She spent most of the rest of my stay in Peru talking about it. I can give you those.”  
  
Crowley’s glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose again. The pisco must have been more potent the second time around, because Aziraphale felt the sudden urge to reach out and fix them for her. “So, what you’re telling me is: you slept with the woman’s husband, and then ended up discussing politics with her after she’d walked in on you.”  
  
“Actually, she only started talking to me after I fixed a huaco that had gotten broken during the ensuing argument,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“How’d you pull that off?”  
  
“Oh, I just-” To demonstrate, Aziraphale took his napkin, and snapped it out over his empty dessert plate. “Now, there’s nothing up my sleeve-”  
  
“No,” Crowley all but growled.  
  
“But in a moment there’s going to be something on this plate,” Aziraphale continued gamely.  
  
“No!” Crowley was fairly writhing in her seat, one hand over her face. “Absolutely not! You stop that!”  
  
He waved his hand over the plate, and then removed the napkin with a flourish. There, on the plate was a perfect replica of the huaco Pamela had been so upset over. “Ta-da! Just like real magic!”  
  
“It _is_ real magic,” Crowley hissed. “When you use your actual magical powers, it is real magic. _Fake_ magic is what you do when you’re just being the most embarrassing person on the face of the Earth.”  
  
“Well I can hardly take my act up to Heaven,” Aziraphale pointed out.  
  
“Eurgh,” Crowley moaned, before finally removing her hand from her face. “And she _fell_ for that? And then she talked with you, after seeing that?”  
  
“Well, I am an angel, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “People are naturally drawn to me, and find my presence soothing.”  
  
Crowley threw back her head and laughed for far longer than the situation warranted.

“Besides, she really liked that huaco,” Aziraphale continued. “It was quite old- probably about as old as Christianity. With it once more whole and unbroken before her, I don’t think she felt much like questioning her luck.” He frowned, as something occurred to him. “You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure that should have been in their home.”  
  
“Yeah, that does sound a bit dodgy,” Crowley agreed. “Is one of them a smuggler, do you think?”  
  
“Teo definitely isn’t,” Aziraphale replied. “I didn’t think Pamela was either. It was a gift from an old friend of hers who I gathered to be a bit rough around the edges…” His voice trailed off as he considered the facts before them. He took another sip of pisco. He was still using the glass that was smudged with Crowley’s lipstick. He wondered if it would show.  
  
“Do you know, my dear,” Aziraphale said contemplatively. “I’m not sure that Downstairs wanted you to wreck _Teo’s_ marriage after all. Or rather, they did, but only because he was married to Pamela.”  
  
“I’m a bit more drunk than you are,” Crowley said. “You’re going to have to explain that thought more clearly.”  
  
“Of the Hinojals, Teo was the only one who was having affairs,” Aziraphale reasoned out. “Which does make him the easier target. Now, Pamela was not cheating, but she’d had _offers_, which she’d declined out of faithfulness, and once it had turned out that Teo was being unfaithful she was _very_ upset about having declined them.”  
  
“Okay, I’m with you so far,” Crowley said.  
  
“One of these offers was from the man who’d gotten her that huaco, which we agree-”  
  
“Which is really dodgy, yeah,” Crowley said.  
  
“So! This fellow, is, I gather, someone with a bit of a nefarious bent. He and Pamela went to college together in Ayacucho, where they fell under the influence of a professor named Abimael Guzmán.”  
  
“Abimael?” Crowley’s nose wrinkled. “Sounds like one of your lot.”  
  
“He most certainly is not!”  
  
“Are you sure?” Crowley said. “This isn’t going to be a situation like with the Free Lebanon Army a few years back, is it?”  
  
Aziraphale winced. He’d been quite certain that they had been affiliated with Hell, and Crowley had insisted that they were affiliated with Heaven, and as it happened, they had both been right. “No, no, definitely not. The man’s a communist,” he explained. “He wouldn’t want anything to do with us, even less than we would want anything to do with him.”  
  
“Oh yeah, definitely one of ours, then,” Crowley agreed. “Well, go on, what are the communists doing in Peru?”  
  
“A lot,” Aziraphale said. “Pamela, as something of… well, I’m not sure she’s really an _ex_-communist, but she’s a softer one than you can find roaming around the highlands. There are a couple of different groups. Guzmán’s group is called the Shining Path, after something José Carlos Mariátegui once said about Marxism.” And thusly, Aziraphale was going to blame him for the way his search for a first edition of _Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality_ had fizzled out into nothing. It was a shame. From the moment he started doing research into Peru, that volume had popped out as something that would be worth collecting. “They consider themselves to be communists in the Maoist vein, for whatever value Mao has in Peru. Pamela didn’t fully explain that.”  
  
“Well, don’t look at me, I can’t explain it to you either,” Crowley said. “I didn’t even know they existed until two minutes ago.”  
  
“Fair point,” Aziraphale conceded. “Anyway, they claimed that they were going to establish a New Democracy led by the peasantry, but when it comes to governing the areas under their control they are often found lacking, and Guzmán in particular is not great at taking criticism. A bone of contention between Pamela and her former professor was his inability to understand when he was stepping on the indigenous people’s beliefs all willy-nilly. And apparently he orders the assassination of his co-combatants about as often as he orders the assassination of members of the government they’re all allegedy fighting against.”  
  
“Again, I’m shocked,” Crowley said, pointing to her very unsurprised face.  
  
“Pamela was involved, not terribly deeply or so I gathered, but deep enough to get a good view of things, up until about 1983. There was, that year, a terrible massacre that killed upwards of sixty people, and the start of fighting between the Shining Path fighters and militias formed by the peasants they claimed to represent. At that point she was given a choice, and she decided that she didn’t believe in the cause enough for it to be worth killing over, and left. Her friend made a different choice- though they remained in touch.”  
  
“And he remained wanting to touch her, it sounds like,” Crowley said.  
  
“Exactly! So, we- or I on your behalf, rather- ruin her marriage. Who does she run off to, after such an experience? Her old friend who got her expensive and probably quite illegal archeological artefacts and has some kind of connection to a terrorist organization. She would return to the communist fold, essentially, and undoubtedly do a great deal of damage- both physically and spiritually- on their behalf in her anger. Who knows? Maybe she would keep the whole conflict going for longer than it needs to. She does have very good aim.”  
  
Crowley nodded. “Okay, right, I see where you’re going with this now,” she said. “But I think you’re forgetting something very important.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“My bosses are nowhere near that competent,” Crowley said, startling a laugh out of him. She continued to speak over him. “They don’t have the intelligence. They don’t have the imagination. And they’re not- thank Whoever it is who watches over us- anywhere near that observant.”  
  
“I mean, they must have had some criterion for selecting Teo,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Honestly? I’m pretty sure that Hastur and Ligur just come up here to get high and fuck in various gay bars, and justify it by sending down the names of men they see there who are clearly married,” Crowley told him.  
  
“Oh. That’s, uh-” Before Aziraphale could quite articulate all the things he found alarming in that sentence, Crowley was already waving him off.  
  
“Don’t worry, they know that you consider London’s gay scene to be your beat. They don’t try it here,” Crowley told him. “They wouldn’t dare.”  
  
“Oh, well. That’s flattering,” Aziraphale said. “They’re Dukes, right? What’s the Heavenly equivalent there, Thrones?”  
  
Crowley was already shaking her head. “It doesn’t work like that, not for demons. There isn’t a Presence you can be metaphysically closer to, in order to draw power from. You’ve got what you’ve got, what you can make other people give to you, and what you can keep from being taken. Hastur and Ligur are Dukes because they’re _mean_, and because they watch one another’s backs, so it’s hard to get the drop on either of them.”  
  
“Oh, I see,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“I have been talking you up, though,” Crowley added. “You can thank me for that, if you like.”  
  
“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale replied drolly.  
  
That wrapped up the Peru portion of the evening. Crowley tapped away a bit more at her ‘laptop’, and then declared herself satisfied with the results. She wrestled the thing back into her bag, and poured herself a fresh glass of wine.  
  
“So. We’ve got to stage a fight of some kind,” Crowley said. “Any ideas?”  
  
“Ideally we’d do it within the year,” Aziraphale told her. “And I would vastly prefer it if we were to have it someplace warm.”  
  
Their last staged fight had taken place up on the Moors, in 1817. It had been freezing cold, and they’d drunk a measure of whiskey to fortify themselves, and then drunk a bit more, and by the time they were willing to force themselves out of the blanket and warming pan cocoon they’d made out of the coach they were well and properly drunk. Thankfully, no one was watching them very closely, because in the end it had largely consisted of Aziraphale slurring his way through the St. Crispin’s Day speech while Crowley summoned several brightly colored fireworks from China. They’d told their respective offices that Crowley had won that one, though not without being slightly wounded. The demon had taken a nap for the rest of the year, while Aziraphale had spent the better part of the next two vacationing in Austria.  
  
“Yeah, definitely some place warm,” Crowley said. “How do you feel about North Africa? Morocco, maybe?”  
  
“I’ve never been,” Aziraphale replied. “Not while it’s been Morocco at any rate. I think the last time I was in that part of the world, it was all part of Carthage.”  
  
“Wait. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve never been to Marrakech?” Crowley said, with such wild disbelief that it bordered on outrage.  
  
“I have not,” Aziraphale confirmed. “Is it nice?”  
  
“It’s very nice, and you know what? That’s our rendezvous point for after we done fighting,” Crowley declared.  
  
“When were you in Marrakech, if you don’t mind me asking?”  
  
“1920s. We weren’t talking still,” Crowley said with a wave of her hand. “Anyway, it’ll be best if we do it early sometime next year. It gets hot down there.”  
  
“March, do you think?” Aziraphale suggested.  
  
“And let’s agree to meet up in February, and hash out more of the details. I can head down there in the meantime, scout a good location for our fight. You come up with something that will look good to our bosses, and then I’ll show you Marrakech.”  
  
“It sounds lovely.” Unfortunately, it also sounded a lot like the end of their evening.  
  
While Crowley sobered herself up for the drive home, Aziraphale poked his head out into the main room, and got the check. He made sure the bill was settled, while Crowley paid her usual generous tip.  
  
That was the night, then. Probably the last they would have together until next year.  
  
Aziraphale walked her to the Bentley.  
  
“Ride home?” she offered, pretended to dig through her purse for her keys. “If I pull up at the end of the block I should be able to avoid those new wards, right?”  
  
“I-” It was on the tip of his tongue to accept, to stretch the night just a little while longer and enjoy her company even for the few minutes time it would take to drive to his shop, when he _remembered_.  
  
It was the way she craned her neck as she peered into her purse that did it, or so he would later think. Something about the way the muscles played under the vulnerable expanse of skin that brought to mind Paltithael’s spear beneath the demon’s chin, and the spear Innahon had placed in his hand, and the order to kill Crowley or to Fall.  
  
Aziraphale took a deep breath through his nose. He hoped it wasn’t obvious, but the way Crowley stopped and looked out at him from the corner of her eyes made him quite certain that his hopes were in vain.  
  
“I think I’ll walk, thanks,” Aziraphale said. “I might as well take advantage of this weather, while we’re having it.”  
  
“Suit yourself,” Crowley said with studied casualness. Her purse snapped shut as it settled back against her hip, and she held her keys in her hand as she waved to him. “Ciao, angel.”  
  
Aziraphale forced a smile to his lips for as long as it took for her to peel away from the curb, and then he let it drop. He put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders hunch miserably.  
  
A dinner between friends. That was all Innahon had seen, and that was all that was required for Aziraphale to place her in terrible danger. _Again._  
  
They weren’t going to get so lucky a second time. It had been highly improbable for them to have gotten so lucky _this_ time.  
  
He was going to have to do better- better at hiding his feelings, better at not feeling them, better at not giving in. He’d need to keep a greater distance, and he’d need to stop encouraging Crowley to come so close.  
  
He needed to bury it, all of it. The love, the yearning, and the stupid ceaseless passion and desire. It was all too dangerous. The world would never be safe enough for it. _Crowley_ could never be safe with it out on display, not with the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to contend with.  
  
He walked back to his shop. It would be months before they would contact one another again. Barring catastrophe, he wouldn’t hear from Crowley until February of next year. Hopefully, that would be enough time to lock it all away. Hopefully, he’d be able to do it better this time. Hopefully, that would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Franco's is another real restaurant. I gathered from their website that the change up the menu fairly often, but I'm not anal enough to try to dig up whatever was on their menu in August of 1990, so whatever menu they had up in the fall of 2019 is what I worked off of.  
\- The Gay Hussar was considered the sister restaurant to Elena's L'Etoile. It closed down in 2018.  
\- I have one (1) strong opinion about food, and it's that paprika isn't a garnish.  
\- Alberto Fujimori was [not the greatest guy.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040701345.html)


	9. Vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy smokes, you guys. It took me forever (and in my defense this has been a terrible year thus far) but I finally finished it. 
> 
> Some additional warnings for this part: Aziraphale dissociates in various ways for a large portion of the first part of this chapter. There’s a not-very in-depth rumination of slavery, and a glancing mention of Nazis, specifically from The Church Scene. There’s a bit more discussed about possible methods of execution, and the possibility of being tortured. There’s a spot of very mild body horror having to do with Crowley’s Fall. There is also sex: awkward, but consensual. I think that’s it.

It was almost exactly twenty-nine years later that Aziraphale found himself standing once more in front of the eagle lectern.  
  
“I’ve been here before,” he said aloud, and then experienced a deep sense of foreboding.  
  
“Yeah, you have?” Crowley called out from the next room. “I think I’ve still got some of the cognac you kept necking out of my bottle from last time, if you like.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded numbly. He had been here before. He’d known that, but he had thought the memory had been lost to too much drinking.  
  
But the presence of the eagle lectern wasn’t a surprise to him. He’d seen it before, and never quite managed to forget it, in the same way he never quite managed to forget any evidence of Crowley’s love.  
  
They had had a lot to drink that night, hadn’t they? And Crowley had groomed his wings. And Aziraphale had told him- after Aziraphale had- he’d-  
  
Crowley let out an oath and was quite suddenly next to him, an arm wrapping around his shoulder. “_It’s not forgetting_ my flat, snakey arse,” he grumbled in panic. “I should have known-”  
  
Aziraphale became aware that he was making some kind of moaning noise, muffled under the hands he’d clamped over his mouth. He made himself stop, and lowered his hands.  
  
“I didn’t forget,” he insisted, even as he let Crowley guide him over to the couch. “I didn’t. I just- I didn’t remember.”  
  
It was true. He hadn’t forgotten, not really. There had been a story patched over the place where every memory of the event he’d thrown into his mental pit of _Not Thinking About It_ would have otherwise been. _The shop was broken into. A team of angels discovered us. Things got dreadfully unpleasant, but eventually Crowley said something tremendously clever and they Fell, and one great splash of holy water later they were gone._ It had been enough to get by on. Enough to tell himself that he was still a loyal soldier of Heaven. Enough to convince Heaven of much the same, and that he’d healed well enough to continue his duties. Enough to paper over what, precisely, that dreadful unpleasantness had entailed.  
  
He supposed, in a way, that it was good that this was only coming out now. If it had all started to discompose earlier, when he’d still been making his regular visits up to Heaven to tell them of Warlock’s progress, and still had Gabriel telling him to get himself ready for that glorious war they were going to win…  
  
He’d never have been able to pull it off. Now, of course, there wasn’t much point. They’d been found out. They’d all but declared themselves rogue agents directly to Gabriel and Beelzebub’s faces. It hardly mattered now, what Heaven thought of him, or he of Heaven. Under other circumstances, that might have been a relief.  
  
He had a little too much on his plate for any relief to register.  
  
“Oh Crowley,” he moaned, his fingers gripping tightly in his own hair. He wasn’t sure when that had happened. He forced his hands down again. “I- I- oh Lord, what I did, I hurt you, I-”  
  
“You were raped, Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupted, with gentle firmness. “You were raped, and so was I. And it was horrible, it was probably one of the worst single nights I’ve spent on Earth, but it wasn’t your fault.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded mutely, less because he agreed and more because that seemed the thing to do. There was some part of him that knew that Crowley was at least mostly right, that if he’d come across anyone else who had had their home invaded and been forced to fuck under pain of causing their best friend’s death he wouldn’t hesitate to say that they’d been raped. Like the relief, that was just going to have to wait until later.  
  
Presuming there would be time later that still held him in it.  
  
“They broke your wing, do you remember that?” Crowley asked.  
  
Aziraphale hadn’t, exactly, but he remembered now: the sharp throbbing pain of it as Innahon knelt down between his legs and inspected him, quite certain that at any moment his fingers were going to go in deeper, quite certain that it would be better to suffer through that than to have to inflict it on Crowley. He nodded as bile clawed up his throat.  
  
“They kept twisting it,” Crowley said. “I could hear the bones grinding together. And I couldn’t- I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t threaten them, couldn’t comfort you, I couldn’t- I just had to sit there and let it happen. Just- let it all happen.”  
  
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly. He reached out for him on instinct, hesitating at the last second before going through with it, and laying his hand gently on his. Crowley took it instantly, interlocking their fingers.  
  
Aziraphale marveled for a moment at the feeling of rightness that suffused through him at the contact before he recalled that they’d done this before, exactly once, on the bed that wasn’t terribly far off from where they sat now.  
  
“Oh my dear,” It felt strange to leave the endearment there. Without precisely knowing why, he’d gotten in the habit these past not-quite-thirty years, of holding himself back from saying it. When he couldn’t restrain himself he always left off the possessive and added a bit on to the end for the sake of propriety: dear boy, dear girl, dear demon. He’d only said that last one once. It felt too close to something he hadn’t dared to think about. _My darling demon_. “Oh, I left you all alone in it didn’t I?”  
  
“Don’t,” Crowley said. “Don’t go there.”  
  
“But-”  
  
“I needed that time, on my own,” Crowley said, giving his hand a squeeze. “I needed to just- to be with people I didn’t know and in places I had no attachment to. I needed that.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded slowly. When they had met up in Morocco for their pretend fight, Crowley had taken him to Marrakech as promised. And then she’d left him in the middle of the night, and while he'd returned home shortly thereafter, Crowley hadn’t moved back to London until it was practically time for Y2K to kick in.  
  
At the time, he’d found that rather perplexing, almost as perplexing as his own urge to try to track her down when they’d gone a year without speaking. They had, after all, gone much longer.  
  
_Wither thou goest..._  
  
“And then I told you we weren’t even friends,” Aziraphale realized, horrified with himself. "After all of- after _everything_ I just-”  
  
“Hey,” Crowley’s free hand landed on his shoulder, a warm and comforting weight. “It’s alright, Aziraphale. I knew you were going to pick me. It was the worst possible way to find out, probably, but I knew when it came down to the wire you’d pick me over Heaven.”  
  
“I wish I’d known that,” Aziraphale said, still utterly furious with himself.  
  
A truly frustrating thing about all of this was that he had never stopped remembering the fallout of that terrible night, and it had become something he’d used to assure himself that Heaven still on the right side of things. He remembered Gabriel’s fumbling attempts of empathy with every pointed remark about the inevitability of Armageddon, Uriel’s attempts at making him tea for no other reason than he’d mentioned it as they’d taunted him about _his boyfriend in the dark glasses_, Israfil’s care and protectiveness as that terrible horn had sounded, and Michael’s fury on his behalf even as she’d proclaimed him Fallen.  
  
He’d remembered Sandalphon, even. That following Michaelmas the names of Innahon and his attendants had been added to the list of hallowed dead. It was an honor that wasn’t supposed to be extended to the Fallen, and he’d known that Sandalphon had to have promised all manner of things he wouldn’t have wanted to promise in order to afford them that dignity.  
  
There was goodness in Heaven, still. There was compassion and mercy and grace. His problem was that he kept trying to convince himself that it was enough for it to just be there and infrequently extended at whim.

“Yeah, that’s- now that we’re talking about it, I’d just like to say that this ‘not remembering’ thing of yours is terrifying,” Crowley said. “How does that even work?”  
  
“Well, it’s- you know how these corporations aren’t really built to hold more than a few centuries of memory at most, and even then, it’s not supposed to recall them perfectly?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Well, I don’t know what the policy in Hell is-”  
  
“Keep it on the cloud,” Crowley explained, though Aziraphale had no notion of what he was talking about.  
  
“As you say,” he agreed. “Anyway, Heaven had this system of mnemonics. The simplest version is to essentially associate a series of memories with an object, and then when you look at that object, you’ll be able to recall them with the usual level of detail.”  
  
“Oh,” Crowley said. “Is that why you’re such a hoarder?”  
  
“In part,” Aziraphale admitted. “I also just like collecting things.”  
  
“Yeah,” Crowley smiled fondly at him for a moment, before a question wrinkled between his brows. “So what does that have to do with-”  
  
“If you get rid of the object, you cannot be reminded of the memories,” Aziraphale said in a rush. “They still exist, of course. If you actively try to remember the details, or are reminded of something else that you associate closely with them… it’s all still there. It’s just more difficult to recall.”  
  
“And that’s why you got rid of the chair,” Crowley realized. “You said it kept sucking you right back into your memories, so you had to be rid of it.”  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Yes, I- I didn’t mean to make that the object those memories were attached to, but I found by the following night that I couldn’t look at it without being- being reminded. There was nothing for it, by that point.”  
  
Crowley nodded. They were each silent for a moment, looking down at their conjoined hands. For a brief moment there, he looked down and thought _That’s not my hand it can’t be_ because it didn’t look like _his_ hand that Crowley was holding, somehow. It looked like a tool. A weapon. Something that had caused Crowley a tremendous amount of pain- something that had nearly killed a child. That _had_ killed four angels newly turned to demons.  
  
_I’ve never killed anyone before,_ he’d said, and though he’d meant it with all the usual qualifiers- not anyone human, not here on Earth, not directly by my own hands, not since the War- he’d still meant them.  
  
“I am sorry, Crowley,” Aziraphale said again.  
  
“Don’t. I knew you didn’t mean it,” Crowley said. “I wouldn’t have gotten so angry, if I hadn’t known that you didn’t mean it.”  
  
The truly terrible thing was that Aziraphale had been so caught up in his own delusions and fear that he almost had meant it, in a way. _We’re not friends_ because they couldn’t be when they were meant to be on opposite sides, two sides which were about to go to war against one another, _I don’t even like you_ because he couldn’t have articulated all the reasons why, but he’d known that his regard was dangerous to them both, and _It’s over_ because if it was over, then Crowley would have no reason to stay. He could run. It wouldn’t hinge on Aziraphale managing to convince Heaven to stand down. It wouldn’t matter what he would have to do if that failed. Crowley could be safe no matter what, if only he was as far away from Aziraphale as possible.  
  
He couldn’t quite make himself say it. He knew that he should, but he just didn’t have it in him to be that brave right now.  
  
“Still, it was a rotten thing to say,” he said. “And I’m sure it hurt to hear.”  
  
Crowley looked away from him a moment. “Yeah,” he admitted finally. “Yeah. It did.”  
  
“I’m sorry to have caused you pain.” Aziraphale felt the urge to laugh, ugly and bitter, and bit it back. “Again.”  
  
Crowley opened his mouth.  
  
“And I’m sorry to have broken my vow to you,” Aziraphale continued. He didn’t quite manage to bite back his laughter this time, and it left him in one undignified stuttering snort. “The one vow I thought I could make to you, and-”  
  
“It didn’t hurt as badly as thinking that the last words I was ever going to say to your face were _I won’t even think about you_,” Crowley interrupted. “That was- that was bad. And then you _came back_. You didn’t- you didn’t even know where I was, or what had happened to your bookshop. You didn’t even wait for a body, but you came back to me. I’d say you kept your promise. It’s like you said. Sometimes we fight. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of things.”  
  
“Oh my dearest,” Aziraphale began, but Crowley wasn’t finished.  
  
“And it’s not like I was able to keep my promise,” Crowley continued, growing increasingly agitated. “I told you I would find some way of getting us both out, and I couldn’t. I mean, what did I come up with? Some half-cocked idea about leaving the planet? Alpha Centauri!”  
  
“I don’t suppose there’s enough time for that now?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Ha! No, no. I don’t- I’m not sure how well it would have worked if we’d left yesterday, and now they’ll- there’s no way they’ll- we can’t-” He cut himself off with a gurgle, breathing harshly. After a moment, Aziraphale gave their conjoined hands a tug. Crowley went, tucking his legs underneath him even as he leaned into Aziraphale’s chest.  
  
“Alpha Centauri only works if we can be overlooked,” Crowley said, letting Aziraphale’s arms encircle him in a proper hug. “If there’s enough chaos in Armageddon that the fact we deserted never registers. If there are enough people obliterated that no one finds it odd that our bodies never turned up, and if there’s no one checking for our miracles.”  
  
It never would have worked, Aziraphale realized with no small degree of shock. Not for him, at least. His platoon had been waiting for him, when he’d showed up in Heaven after being discorporated. They’d been meant to be one of the first units to actually arrive on Earth, drawing on his vast experience as an Earthly agent to identify strongholds that could be used by Heaven, and any such places that might have already been overtaken by Hell. The first ones over the top- or under it, he supposed. It was important work, very prestigious in its own way, and it was very likely that the majority of them would either have been discorporated by human weapons or outright killed by invading demons during the first few hours. He still would have been missed if he hadn’t showed up, and someone would have come looking for him- or, more likely, come to hunt him down.  
  
Crowley might have been able to run. _Might_. It was part of the strange balance between them in their roles here on Earth: Crowley was held in high- if also highly begrudged- regard by his superiors but had no rank to speak of, while Aziraphale held the highest rank an Earthly agent could possess, but had nothing in the way of standing or reputation. He wasn’t sure what that would mean for Crowley’s position in the War. He wasn’t sure if that meant he would be more likely to be missed, or more likely to have his disappearance be swept under the rug.  
  
He was quite sure that it didn’t really matter at this point, if it ever would have. Now that he was remembering- now that he was _thinking_ about it all, _Things I Would Have Nightmares About, If I Slept_, _Reasons I Am In Love With The Demon Crowley_, and even _And That’s Why I Have Lost All Faith In Heaven_ all jostling together helter-skelter for space in the forefront of his mind- it all seemed rather inevitable. Of course they would still be here, after it was all supposed to end. Crowley could no more have left Aziraphale behind on a doomed Earth than Aziraphale could have donned that uniform and helped to doom the Earth that might have held Crowley.  
  
“They’re going to kill us,” Crowley said bleakly, his words muffled against the front of Aziraphale’s shirt. “There’s no getting out of it now. They’re going to kill us.”  
  
“I’d imagine so, yes,” Aziraphale replied, burying his face into the top of Crowley’s head.  
  
For a long moment neither one of them said anything. They simply held one another, and breathed. Aziraphale ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair- short and stiff with a demonic miracle’s approximation of styling gel, just as it had been that night when he’d confessed his feelings. Just as it hadn’t been a few days before that, when Crowley had pressed himself against Aziraphale under the unfriendly eyes of four agents of Heaven and forgiven him for so much, even then...  
  
“I don’t think I can find us a way out of this,” Crowley admitted, mercifully jolting him out of that line of thought  
  
“You shouldn’t have to,” Aziraphale said, suddenly overcome with how _unfair_ it was. It wasn’t merely that Crowley had done more than his fair share of thinking them through the Apocalypse today, though that was certainly true. It just wasn’t fair, after everything they’d been through, after everything they’d denied themselves and one another simply for the chance to live this long, for this to be their end. “You shouldn’t.”  
  
How would it happen? They would have to come down here and get them, of that Aziraphale had no doubt. Even if either of their respective Head Offices were to try and send one, neither one of them would exactly answer a summons now.  
  
He wondered if Heaven and Hell would attack separately, or if they would clench their teeth and work together, set up some kind of joint task force. Would he and Crowley even have the chance to make a last stand? Or would they simply be overwhelmed and overpowered before they could attempt such a thing?  
  
Would they do it here- their executions, that final swing of an axe or scimitar or however it was meant to be done? He clutched Crowley more tightly to himself and Crowley responded in kind, shifting more fully against him, pressing their bodies more closely together. Would they kill Crowley right in front of him? Or would it be the other way around- would his last sight of him be of the demon struggling futilely as Aziraphale’s death came bearing down upon him?  
  
No. They wouldn’t. They would need to be made an example of, and that couldn’t be done here, on Earth. They would be dragged back where they came from, then, and it would end with Aziraphale making that terrible walk through the Hall up to the Dias of the Memitim before the eyes of the Host wondering how badly Crowley would be tortured in Hell before he too was obliterated.  
  
A sort of numbing calm came over Aziraphale then. He could picture it still, their deaths, but he could no longer quite believe in them.  
  
It just wasn’t _fair_.

“Thanks, by the way,” Crowley said.  
  
Aziraphale frowned. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of anything he’d done recently to merit thanks. “Whatever for?”  
  
“The holy water,” Crowley told him. “It saved my life today. For today, at least. Yesterday? It’s just about yesterday now. Anyway, I wouldn’t have made it past Hastur and Ligur otherwise.”  
  
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Aziraphale said faintly. The moment Crowley had said ‘holy water’ he’d been seized with a terrible vision of Crowley explaining that, since their demise was inevitable anyway, he would prefer to go out on his own terms and would be doing that shortly. He’d absorbed enough to know that Crowley had then gone on to say nothing of the kind, but any more nuance to Crowley’s words had been lost on him.  
  
“Hastur and Ligur. Well, mostly Ligur. I dumped the holy water in a bucket and then put the bucket over the door, and Ligur was the first one through,” Crowley sat up and gestured over the back of the couch. “He left quite the puddle on the floor.” Crowley frowned, and sat up a bit more. “Well. There _was_ a puddle on the floor.”  
  
“Perhaps it evaporated,” Aziraphale said, trying to calm the still racing beat of his heart.  
  
“Yeah, maybe,” Crowley said. He settled back down against Aziraphale’s chest again, and Aziraphale tried not to clutch him too tightly. “Bloody awful way to die,” he said quietly, after a moment.  
  
Aziraphale, who had spent a considerable amount of time over the past one hundred and fifty seven years picturing just such an event, nodded silently.  
  
“I’m glad they can’t do that to me,” Crowley said, after a moment. “I mean, where would they even get the stuff? I barely got you to give me a thermos full, and you _like_ me.”  
  
“I love you,” Aziraphale reminded him, a bit too preoccupied to filter as he normally would.  
  
Crowley gave a sort of full-body twitch in his arms. “Nrg. Yeah. That.”  
  
The numbness settled over Aziraphale once more like a shroud over a corpse, and he watched it all play out in his mind’s eye with a sense of overwhelming detachment: a pyre in Heaven waiting to be lit with hellfire, and some bleak drowning pit in Hell waiting to be filled with holy water. “They’d trade for it.”  
  
“What?” Crowley asked, lifting his head up slightly with a frown.  
  
“That’s how they’d get the stuff. They’d trade for it. Hellfire for holy water.”  
  
“Oh.” Crowley slumped against him. “Oh, shit.”  
  
Aziraphale found he couldn’t come up with a suitable reply to that.  
  
“Beelzebub and Gabriel did seem pretty chummy on the airfield, didn’t they?” Crowley added.  
  
“Chummy enough when given a common cause,” Aziraphale agreed.  
  
“And we publicly humiliated them in front of a bunch of eleven year olds, so we qualify,” Crowley concluded grimly.  
  
“I’m afraid so.”  
  
After a long moment, Crowley pulled away. “I left all the alcohol in the kitchen. I’ll be right back, angel.” He hesitated for a moment, and then quickly pressed a kiss to the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth before darting away.  
  
Aziraphale raises his hand once more, touching his fingers lightly to the spot Crowley's lips had just been. It was the first time they’d kissed, and Aziraphale hadn’t done more than simply sit there and let it happen.  
  
It just wasn’t _fair_.  
  
They’d done their best, hadn’t they? They’d _tried_ their best, certainly, to do their utmost to keep one another alive and the Earth spinning. The last part had been managed, even if in the end they’d done precious little- and even then he couldn’t help but feel like the majority of their work had been done by Crowley. Not that it would make any difference. The Apocalypse had been stopped, and they’d been there to tell their bosses that they were wrong to think that it had to happen in the first place. That was their crime. They hadn’t stepped into line.  
  
Funny that both their sides should take the same dim view of not following orders.  
  
Aziraphale leaned back against the couch, and tilted his head upwards. He’d never actually doubted that God had a Plan, no matter how terrible things got. He hadn’t really questioned it twenty-nine years ago, and he hadn’t questioned it through any other of the greater- if also less personal- tragedies he’d lived through. God had a Plan, and he trusted that it would be for the best in the end. He trusted that when the end was reached and he looked back at the story made of history that it would be worthwhile, even if it had been a bit heartrending in places.  
  
Take the Plagues of Egypt, for example. Absolutely awful to live through. But, after a few thousand years for even his recollection of the events to narrow down to a few sharp points- the smell of the Nile run low with drought and clogged with corpses, the sight of people left to die on the street simply because no one around them had an energy to move them, the dark that had seemed to boil in his eyes when he stepped out of Goshen, the horrible screaming when the Egyptians had awakened the morning after that final Plague, the way Bityah, had looked as she left with adoptive son’s people, unable to stay with her blood relations any longer, and unable to mourn her nephew while among the Hebrews who had feared him as their future oppressor…  
  
Oh, dear. There were a great many more sharp points than he’d thought.  
  
That wasn’t the point. The point was that as utterly horrid and devastating as it had been, after a few thousand years for the events to grow distant to him and become more narrative than memory to humanity he could see the ‘why’ take shape. Not only to free the Hebrews, as had been Moses’ stated goal, and not to prove the might of God, as was the official verdict of Heaven, but for what the humans would make of the story.  
  
There was Passover, of course. It was a bit difficult to imagine what Judaism would be like without it, both in terms of not having seders and in terms of how very many people might have grown up differently if they hadn’t recited “We were once slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…” year after year. And later still, the story had become something of a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement, which itself would go on to outlaw slavery entirely. It had stood as a counterpoint to people who held very strange ideas about the relationship between Noah and Ham, and tried to make some kind of moral argument on that basis. It had been a source of strength and inspiration for those looking to escape from slavery as well- they’d called Harriet Tubman _Moses_, after all.  
  
The pro-slavery factions had been very aware of the story’s influences too. One of his Bibles had been printed by missionaries for work with those enslaved in the Caribbean: they’d elided the Book of Exodus entirely. They hadn’t wanted the people they were preaching to to get any ideas about their worth as people rather than objects. He kept the book as a reminder, of the power things had even when they had become stories.  
  
He _had_ kept it, at least. It would have burned with the rest of his collection.  
  
There was a sound from his right. Aziraphale turned his head, and took in the sight of Crowley, holding out a glass.  
  
Aziraphale made some kind of noise in reply, and took it.  
  
Crowley settled next to him, his own glass obliging filling itself from the bottle he’d set on the coffee table. “Are you alright?” He asked.  
  
Aziraphale opened his mouth. The words “As well as I can be, I expect,” came out of it.  
  
So. What point were their deaths going to have, narratively speaking?  
  
Probably nothing as important as the end of slavery or being the cornerstone of one of the oldest religions still practiced, but it must have _some_ significance, surely, particularly coming now.  
  
He’d always thought that his being executed would have amounted to nothing, justifying his own fear of death with the knowledge that it would only magnify the fears of those who might perhaps sometimes wonder if Heaven was perhaps going too far, or was out of touch with the humans they were supposed to watch over. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps his execution would be the thing that would spark change.  
  
Even as the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t help but dismiss it. Perhaps if he’d been well-liked, or influential, or just about anything but himself, that might have been true. But he was himself. He had no friends in Heaven, much less friends who might be moved to action on his behalf.  
  
Crowley, then. He was better liked in Hell than Aziraphale was in Heaven. Perhaps…  
  
No, no. Crowley would have mentioned any friends- he might have even introduced them to Aziraphale. From what Crowley had told him, Hell’s affinity for him had been more utilitarian than fond: they liked him because he could deliver results, and that was very obviously not something he was going to be doing for them again in a hurry.  
  
“Aziraphale,” Crowley was saying from next to him. He’d been saying it over and over again for several seconds, Aziraphale belatedly realized.  
  
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale made himself say. The words came as they would, but actually speaking took effort. “It’s just all catching up to me at once, I’m afraid.” He drank. He wasn’t sure what Crowley had poured him: he could taste nothing and it sat more heavily in his stomach than any alcohol had any right to sit.  
  
The problem was that they weren’t anyone particularly important in the grand scheme of things. They’d been in the right place, and they’d been here for some time, and now it was going to get them killed, and he couldn’t work out _why_.  
  
Perhaps it just wasn’t for him to know. It wasn’t as though God was in the habit of sitting people down and saying “Terribly sorry about the death you’re about to experience, but this will actually save lives in the long run.” It’s not like Aziraphale had tried to explain that to Adam either, before he’d pulled the trigger.  
  
He shivered, and drank again. Thank God for Tracy. Thank God.  
  
He still couldn’t taste anything, but Crowley topped him off. “Thank you, my dearest,” he heard himself say.  
  
It occurred to him then that perhaps they were in the wrong after all. Maybe there was supposed to be an Armageddon. Maybe the point of their deaths in God’s Plan really was to keep everyone in line.  
  
He couldn’t quite make himself believe it. It just wasn’t fair- and, what’s more, it didn’t make any sense. If the point of his existence was to be an object lesson in obedience then his death could have happened sooner, much sooner. It could have happened twenty-nine years ago. It could have happened thousands of years ago, if the loss of his sword had been discovered. It could have happened without killing Crowley too.  
  
_They Fell, when they touched you. When they had to physically compel the rape._ He remembered, looking over at Crowley, who looked back at him with an expression of such concern and distress that it gave Aziraphale a pain in his chest. _That wouldn’t have happened if She didn’t love you too._  
  
It wasn’t fair, and it didn’t make any sense, and there had to be something he was missing.  
  
There had to be a way out. That must be what he was missing: there had to be a way for them to go on together.  
  
Cognac, he abruptly realized. That’s what he was drinking- Crowley had mentioned something about that earlier, hadn’t he?

“You know my dear, I think we have proof now that you were right,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“It’s been known to happen,” Crowley said, with palpable relief. “Right about what, though?”  
  
“About us being saved all these years for something. I think you were right, and I think this was it,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“We did almost nothing,” Crowley said.  
  
“Did we?”  
  
“Yes, yes we did! We had eyes on the wrong boy for _eleven years_,” Crowley told him, as though he might have forgotten.  
  
Aziraphale wasn’t sure he’d ever remembered so much so clearly before in his life “Yes, that’s rather my point. I lied about his progress to Heaven- and I didn’t just leave out the surly bits, or give the impression of him having many interests outside of his phone. I made him sound powerful- like he had powers, akin to ours. And I know you must have done similar with your side.”  
  
“Yeah, that was the plan- which we failed at, you know.”  
  
“We failed at our plan to influence the Antichrist. We succeeded in keeping Heaven and Hell from knowing where he was until the very last second, which I think might have been Her plan, at least in part.”  
  
Crowley blinked at him. “What.”  
  
“Think about it, Crowley. There were no check-ins at the Dowlings, not from either my side or yours. No one in either of our respective Head Offices ever got curious as to how the Destroyer of Worlds was coming on and sent someone to observe. They never had to- we gave them precisely the sort of reports that they wanted to hear at regular intervals. We kept all eyes on Warlock, and Adam got away from them right up until the very end.”  
  
“Okay, that’s- convoluted and dramatic and very in-character for God,” Crowley admitted. “Is there a point you’re driving to with this?”  
  
“My point is that I think we’ve done as we were meant to do, so there is no reason for us to die now,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“I think you’ve got that backwards,” Crowley said. “If we’ve done what we were meant to do, then there’s no reason to keep us alive, is there?”  
  
“We’ve done as we needed to do. It was absolutely horrid in places, but we did it, and we’ve earned a little peace,” Aziraphale said. “We’re owed it.”  
  
“God doesn’t owe anyone anything!” Crowley spluttered. “That’s why She’s God!”  
  
“It makes no sense for us to die now, after everything,” Aziraphale insisted.  
  
“God doesn’t need to make sense, you know this, you’re the one who’s always going on and on about ineffability-”  
  
“There would be no point to it if we died now- the past six thousand years, the pain and the separation and the all of it, there would be no point to _anything_ if they killed you now-”  
  
“Sometimes there is no point! Do you not remember Job? Or Jesus- how necessary was it for Jesus to really die like that? How necessary was crucifixion in general? Or- or how many martyrs have we seen over the years, Aziraphale? How many people died to prove a point that didn’t even have to be proven? We’ve watched the humans die and kill in countless, pointless ways since bloody Cain and Abel, why are we any different?”  
  
The solution to their problem was suddenly so evident that Aziraphale did laugh then, the sound somewhere between the gurgle of a dying man and nails on a chalkboard. It was a harsh ugly sound he really wished he could stop making, but it took several moments before he could manage the task.  
  
“_Angel_,” Crowley said, one hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder as he fought to calm down. “It’s- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”  
  
“No,” Aziraphale said. His voice had gone rather raspy at some point, so he took another drink. “No, you’re right. Let’s- let’s just discount divine intervention, then, shall we? I mean, we should probably do that anyway, pretty much every message from Her actually comes through Gabriel’s office these days, and every message that doesn’t comes through the Metatron, and he lied to my face just earlier, so _sod_ that.”  
  
Crowley made some sort of choked-off noise that might have been trying to be a giggle, and the hand he had on Aziraphale’s shoulder tightened fractionally.  
  
“Anyway, let’s leave aside the Almighty and Her Ineffable Plans for the moment.” Aziraphale reached into his jacket pocket, and withdrew the slightly charred slip of paper so he could brandish it beneath Crowley’s nose. “How about an entirely human nice and accurate prophecy?”  
  
Crowley took the prophecy, though he didn’t read it. “Is this from your Nutter book?”  
  
“_The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch_,” Aziraphale confirmed. “It’s the only book of prophecy which is entirely true.”  
  
“Yeah. Those Nazis of yours sure thought so,” Crowley said.  
  
“They were hardly my Nazis,” Aziraphale said, insulted. “I thought I was working for the British government to get them all arrested and hung.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Crowley said absently. He had read the prophecy now, twice over, and was giving it a third look. “But you believe it?”  
  
“Believe..?”  
  
“That these are all true,” Crowley said.  
  
“Well, yes,” Aziraphale said, a little taken aback. “I mean, most everything I read turned out to be true.”  
  
“Most?”  
  
“Some of it was of a personal nature, which I have no way to verify,” Aziraphale said. “And the rest referred to events which hadn’t quite come to pass. This one for example. _When all is said and all is done_... if there is a more said and done time than this, I don’t know what it could be.”  
  
“And the ones which came true, were they… how were they phrased? We they ambiguous or allegorical or-”  
  
“Oh no. Many of them were rather blunt- though they likely would not have been understood by anyone who wasn’t a contemporary of the event being prophesied. _Do not buy Peter Max_ for example. That was one of yours, wasn’t it?”  
  
“Betamax. Yeah, Hell never did quite understand what I was doing with the format wars,” Crowley remarked absently, his eyes still glued to the prophecy. Then, abruptly, he set the prophecy down on the coffee table and flung himself back against the couch, one hand over his eyes.  
  
“You’ve done it, haven’t you?” Aziraphale realized, with a terrible swell of fondness. “You tremendously clever thing, you’ve worked it out, you’ve-”  
  
“Don’t,” Crowley hissed. “Don’t, just- we can’t. I think I know what this is trying to say, and we can’t, we absolutely _cannot_ do this.”  
  
“Why not?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
When Crowley didn’t answer, he moved towards the demon, and gently took the hand from his face and held it between his own. “Crowley,” he said softly. “You promised. You promised you would find us a way out.”  
  
“That's not fair, Aziraphale,” Crowley whimpered.  
  
“I know,” Aziraphale said, already regretting his words. “I know, and I’m sorry. Nothing about this is fair, there’s no need for me to go adding to it. But can you at least tell me why?”  
  
Crowley bit down on his lip. “You’d have to go to Hell,” he said, at last.  
  
“While I understand your reluctance, and I certainly don’t relish the prospect,” Aziraphale said. “I think we’d survive.”  
  
“Oh? How’s that?”  
  
“Agnes has to have known that this would be the prophecy to fall out of her book,” Aziraphale said. “I can’t see that she would have written it, if it wasn’t meant to prevent our deaths.”  
  
“So she not only wrote these prophecies that all came true, but she saw us interact with them?” Crowley asked incredulously.  
  
“Yes. I know that for a fact,” Aziraphale told him. “When I was flipping through the book before being discorporated, she told me that my cocoa was going cold.”  
  
“That’s not a prophecy, that’s common sense!” Crowley retorted. “_I_ could have told you that your cocoa was going cold if you’d let me in on what you were doing.”  
  
“You’ve known me for over six thousand years. Agnes and I never met,” Aziraphale pointed out. “She probably didn’t even have any first hand experience with cocoa, much less my habits while drinking it. And besides, I wasn’t even reading the book cover to cover. I was flipping through it at random, trying to find something that would jump out at me. I could have, in theory, come across that prophecy while my cocoa was still piping hot.”  
  
Crowley looked away, clearly unhappy.  
  
“My dear, I know- I know this must be something you have feared for a very long time,” Aziraphale said. “But, tell me honestly: would Hell really have anything for us that would be much worse than what Heaven has already put us through?”  
  
Crowley sighed. “I wouldn’t- I couldn’t- be there with you, if we did this.”  
  
“Why not?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“I’d have to be in Heaven.”  
  
Aziraphale frowned. “How would you get into Heaven? There’s…_oh_!”  
  
_Choose your faces wisely._ It wasn’t anything ambiguous, not an allegory or figure of speech. It was blunt, to the point, and completely literal. Heaven and Hell would trade hellfire for holy water, and they would trade their faces to survive it.  
  
“And now you’ve worked it out,” Crowley said with a groan.  
  
“Yes, I do believe I have,” Aziraphale said, his face contorting in what it took him a minute to realize was a grin.

“No! Don’t be happy about it!” Crowley admonished him. “Look, hellfire and holy water are not going to be the only things we have to worry about. You’d be in Hell, wearing my face- the face of a traitor, probably the most hated traitor we’ve got as of right now. There’s no way to know that it will just be a quick dunk in some holy water. There’s no way to know that they’ll let you go after that didn’t work.”  
  
“There’s no way to know that Heaven will stop at hellfire either,” Aziraphale pointed out. “They wouldn’t want to make a spectacle out of it, but behind closed doors… well. They will be expecting to be the only ones left to talk about it. They could make up whatever story they wished to make up, content that no one would ever be able to contradict them.”  
  
“They might make you Fall,” Crowley pointed out.  
  
“I’m not sure that would work, given that you’ve already Fallen,” Aziraphale pointed out.  
  
“I’m not sure that it wouldn’t,” Crowley said, which was a fair point.  
  
Aziraphale wasn’t really in the mood for fair points at this juncture. “Well, if you can manage it, try not to Fall all the way back down to Hell, would you? It’ll be a great deal of hassle if I have to go back down to Hell to fetch you out.”  
  
“Hassle,” Crowley repeated flatly. “You think going into Hell, still wearing my skin, to rescue me, still wearing yours, would be a _hassle_?”  
  
“I gave you my word,” Aziraphale said. “And as grateful as I am for you forgiving my earlier lapse in judgement, I have no intention of going back on it again, not now. If you don’t return safely to me, then I’m coming after you.”  
  
Crowley’s face twisted miserably. “It might stick,” he said. “If they damned me, if we made our way back to each other and switched back, it might stick. You might be Fallen by the end of it- a demon, like me.”  
  
“I’d rather be a demon like you than an angel like Sandalphon,” Aziraphale pointed out.  
  
“_Angel_,” Crowley protested. “Think about it, seriously, just- for the rest of eternity, you’d be damned. Please.”  
  
“I’m not saying that I wouldn’t- that I wouldn’t feel a sense of loss,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sure that I would. I’m sure it would be an adjustment, but I would adjust eventually, Crowley.” He reached out to cup his demon’s face. “If it’s a choice between your death and my Fall, my answer remains unchanged,” he reminded him. Crowley leaned against his hand slightly, looking anguished. “I want you to live, Crowley. I want us both to live. I want us to survive this, because you must know that if we do, Crowley, that will be an end. We’ll be free. No more Heaven looming over my shoulder, no more Hell nipping at your heels. I won’t say no more fear, because I doubt it will be easy for either of us to stop fearing after all these years of it, but we won’t have to worry about being found out, about their reaction. We’ve been found out. This is their reaction. If we can just get past that...”  
  
“We can be together,” Crowley finished for him, and _oh_, the yearning in his eyes…  
  
“We’ll have all the time in the world,” Aziraphale confirmed.  
  
Crowley groaned unexpectedly. “Oh, don’t say _that_.”  
  
“What?” Aziraphale said, bewildered. He withdrew his hand, suddenly unsure of his welcome.  
  
“That film ended horribly for the newly wed couple,” Crowley explained. “We’re trying _not_ to die.”  
  
“What film?” Aziraphale asked, still feeling rather wrong-footed.  
  
Crowley laughed, not unkindly. “Of course you haven’t seen the film.” He shook his head, and sat up a little straighter. He was grinning with that debonair air of his as he continued with “I’ll show it to you, sometime. You know what, there’s a book, I’ll get you a copy of the book too.”  
  
“I suppose I’ll have to start rebuilding my collection somewhere,” Aziraphale said. “Does that mean you agree?”  
  
“Let’s see if it’s possible first,” Crowley said. “How do you suppose we’re meant to do this?”  
  
“Well,” Aziraphale said, after a moment’s thought. “I suppose we should start by trying to switch corporations.”  
  
It was a surprisingly easy transition. Corporations first, and then, bit by bit, the more metaphysical aspects of themselves that they would need to possess in order to be mistaken for one another. They knew one another as well as they knew themselves, and the whole process was almost cozy. _Oh, yes, I know you,_ Aziraphale kept thinking. _There you are._  
  
Aziraphale had four faces in total, though he hadn’t used any but the human one in a very long time. Crowley had seven, two of them badly disfigured by the Fall. Aziraphale took them when they were offered, trying to convey as much tenderness as possible- he could tell that Crowley was self-conscious about them.  
  
_I worry that they hurt you, and that they are hurting you still, because I am quite tired of bearing up under the thought of you in pain,_ he thought after the first one, and because they were so connected it was as though he’d whispered it directly in Crowley’s ear. _But I cannot help but love every part of you, hurting or not. Anything that makes you who you are is exquisite to me._  
  
Crowley was still self-conscious about the second disfigured face, but there was more bashfulness about it than dread.  
  
They experienced one minor hiccup during the entirety of the production: when they switched out Aziraphale’s connection with the Almighty for the empty space where Crowley’s had once been. Aziraphale experienced a pang of loss, and a momentary fear over the thought that this might be a permanent state of being, and then a bit of relief that the sensation wasn’t half so terrible as he’d feared it would be. Then he looked over at Crowley and realized that the demon was having a panic attack.  
  
“Crowley?” he asked.  
  
Crowley merely clutched at the front of his chest and breathed very quickly, nearly hyperventilating.  
  
“Crowley, my dear, I need you to breathe,” Aziraphale said. It was a very strange thing, for him to say those words and have them leave his mouth in Crowley’s voice. “Just: breathe for me, in and out, in and out.” He moved towards him, Crowley’s limbs nearly tangling him up in their longevity and flexibility before he got ahold of them. He wriggled behind Crowley, forcing his head forwards between his knees and pressing them together back to chest. “Breathe with me, my dear: in and out. In and out.”  
  
“She knows,” Crowley rasped out, as soon as he’d calmed down enough for speech. “She knows, Aziraphale, _She knows I’m in here_.”  
  
Aziraphale took a moment to parse that. “Do you mean God?” he asked incredulously.  
  
“Yes!” Crowley said. “I can _feel_ Her, She’s right there…”  
  
“I- my dear. She’s God. She’s been here this whole time,” he pointed out as gently as he could.  
  
“I didn’t think She was actively watching!” Crowley protested. “Jesus fucking Christ, how do you go about with all this Almighty thisness in you?”  
  
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’ve never gone without,” Aziraphale told him. “I’ve never- it hasn’t been an active presence for me since the Garden. Is She-”  
  
“It’s like She’s telling a joke I can’t understand and promising me that I will when I’m older,” Crowley groaned.  
  
“Ah.” Well, he’d certainly never gotten _that_ impression from the presence of God.  
  
“It’s really- nothing about this is funny at all,” Crowley continued. “I don’t know how to take that.”  
  
“Well, that makes two of us,” Aziraphale replied, startling a laugh out of the demon.  
  
Ultimately, there wasn’t much either of them could do about it. After a moment either Crowley adjusted to having a connection with the Almighty or She withdrew enough to give him space to breathe, and they had to get on with the next item on the agenda: acting. Specifically, acting as one another. Oddly enough, the fact that they knew each other so well proved to be a bit of a barrier. They were comfortable around each other, and they tended to act comfortably in one another’s presence. Meanwhile, neither one of them would call it comfortable to be in the official presence of representatives of their respective Head Offices, even when they weren’t trying to kill them.  
  
“No, no you can’t fidget like that,” Aziraphale groaned. He took another sip from his snifter of cognac, fascinated by the way Crowley’s palette made the experience so different from drinking with his own mouth. There were less honeysuckle undertones, and more of a buttery aftertaste.  
  
“I hate to break it to you, Aziraphale, but you fidget exactly like this,” Crowley said, his fingers playing with a patch on his cuffs that looked rather more ragged and threadbare from this angle than he would have presumed.  
  
“Not in Heaven I don’t,” Aziraphale said. “Not for very long before I catch myself, at least. Generally I manage to pass it off as straightening my clothing out a bit, and then it’s parade rest from there on out.” He demonstrated, standing with his feet planted apart and his hands clasped behind his back. “Oh, and try not to preen too often either.”  
  
“Preen?” Crowley frowned, wrinkling his forehead before sudden comprehension smoothed it over. Aziraphale wondered if his face was always so expressive. “Oh, do you mean your wiggles?”  
  
“What?” Aziraphale asked, so Crowley demonstrated, and oh dear, that did look rather wiggly, didn’t it? “Yes. That.”  
  
“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it. You only do that when you’re really happy.”  
  
Crowley took similar umbridge with Aziraphale’s attempts at replicating his saunter.  
  
“No, no, that’s too confident,” he said. “You’ll be in Hell. They scare the shit out of me on a good day, and we haven’t had a day I could even pretend was good all week.”  
  
Personally, Aziraphale thought that Crowley was selling himself short. He’d seen the demon beaten and violated and scared, and he’d been snarling and defiant to the last- not to mention a great deal more articulate than Aziraphale had been capable of being. Still, he dutifully hunched in on himself bit by bit until Crowley was satisfied that he looked properly cowed.  
  
Aziraphale promised himself that he would try his best to keep it up until he knew for certain that it was going to work. And then… well. He knew what Crowley looked like when he had the upper hand, but from the sound of things, Hell didn’t. They wouldn’t quite know what hit them. They wouldn’t know where it had come from. But they would, if all went well, know to leave well enough alone and let them be.

“Good enough, do you think?” Crowley asked, still standing with his hands behind his back. “I mean, it’s not like it has to be perfect. No one in Hell actually knows me all that well.”

“No,” Aziraphale confirmed from where he was slouched against the wall. “No one in Heaven knows me all that well either.”

They were silent for a moment, smiling nervously at one another.

“Is there anyone I need to watch out for?” Aziraphale asked.

“Watch out for?” Crowley asked.

“Yes. Anyone who might want to get a few kicks in before the main event starts.” He frowned, and picked up his glass. Or a glass, at least. It seemed silly to keep track when they had literally swapped mouths. “Presuming the kicking isn’t part of the main event.”

“They shouldn’t torture you,” Crowley said flatly. “It would ruin the spectacle. They might rough you up a bit on the way down, but they’re going to want you to be able to put on a good show- it’s more fun if they have to throw you in kicking and screaming, especially if you manage to drag a few imps in with you.”

“I shall have to do a cannonball, then,” Aziraphale replied, startling a laugh out of the demon.

“Hastur might be a problem, considering the whole killing Ligur thing,” Crowley said. “_Might_. He’ll want revenge, he’ll want it to be personal, and he doesn’t really have a lot of self-restraint.”

“But that’s still only a might?”

“I’m betting that Beelzebub will keep him on a tight leash. He’s a known quantity, and they can’t have him undermining them by ruining the show,” Crowley frowned, pensive. “If anyone else tries anything, tell them that. It’s not worth getting their giggles in at my expense if they have to deal with Beelzebub’s temper afterwards.”

Aziraphale nodded. He would have to think of some suitably suave way of putting that, so he didn’t freeze up in the moment. “Don’t let Sandalphon drag you off anywhere alone.”

“What?”

“He can be a bit violent. It’s tolerated as long as it’s kept behind closed doors and no one is too seriously injured- but they can always say that you were injured trying to run from Heaven, if anyone asks,” Aziraphale explained. “If he tries to take you off alone somewhere- if _anyone_ tries to take you off alone somewhere- make a scene. I wouldn’t- crying won’t earn you any sympathy, but if you’re blunt enough about expecting to be beaten they might back off if only to prove you wrong.”

Crowley stared at him for a moment. It was truly disconcerting, to be stared at with his own eyes. “Is this typical?” he asked.

“For executions? I don’t know. Normally I’m not called in until it’s time for the deed to be done, if I’m being called in at all.” Which was generally only done when the unfortunate angel in question was either a fellow Principality, or someone whose posting was on Earth, or very often both. “You’ll- they’ll also expect me to be able to move under my own power. Everyone else did. Traditionally, the condemned goes on a bit of a walk through the ranks before being unmade. I don’t recall anyone limping or anything.”

“Okay. Yikes, but okay,” Crowley said, and if it was strange to be stared at with his own eyes, it was even stranger to hear those words coming out of his own mouth. “I was actually asking if that was typical of Mr. You-Didn’t-Know-Him-During-The-Drought.”

“But you didn’t know him!” Aziraphale cried. “And I don’t know what went wrong.”

Maybe he hadn’t left his despair behind when he took up the name Sandalphon after all. Maybe it had simply hardened into bitterness, until he no longer cared what end there was so long as there was an end.

“I don’t know what went wrong,” he repeated. “Just don’t get caught alone with him, if you can help it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Crowley promised.

They were each silent for a moment.

“If this works,” Crowley began, and then stopped for a time. “Well. Even if it works, there’s a chance that they won’t back off.”

“I’ve been worrying about that too,” Aziraphale said. He took a seat and poured himself another glass, and then poured another glass for Crowley when he settled back down next to him. This wasn’t the sort of conversation that would be enhanced with sobriety. “Heaven does have other methods of execution besides hellfire, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that,” Crowley said. “How?”

“Well, the armory’s still there, and, well. Those weapons work well enough on angels that haven’t Fallen, as I’m sure you recall,” Aziraphale said. He took an overly-large mouthful of cognac, which gave him the perfect excuse to not speak for a bit. “If the wrong bits are removed, or you’re stabbed in the right place, those weapons are still lethal.”

Crowley nodded slowly. “And, I- how exactly, is it usually done? Is it an axe, or a sword, or..?”

“It’s changed as the humans have come up with new methods of execution,” Aziraphale told him. “Actually, the last few times it’s been a guillotine, believe it or not.”

Crowley stared at him again for a moment, before suddenly collapsing into a near-hysterical laughing fit.

Aziraphale was immediately struck with two notions: first that, somehow, that laugh was entirely Crowley’s even though it was being produced from Aziraphale’s body, and secondly “Crowley, it’s not funny!”

“I know!” Crowley wheezed, which for some reason set Aziraphale off, and the two of them clutched at one another and laughed for an absurd length of time.

“I presume that Hell is liable to default to torture?” Aziraphale asked, once they’d calmed down a bit.

“Yep,” Crowley and then he frowned. He licked his lips and tried again. “Yep. Yep! Huh. I can’t make the p pop with your mouth.”

It wasn’t the most suave change in topic of discussion Crowley had ever managed, but in all honesty Aziraphale wasn’t too keen to discuss the particulars of what went on in the pits of Hell. “Well, your tongue is very strange.”

“My tongue is unique and a treasure, thanks,” Crowley retorted. Then he frowned again. “Wait, how are you not hissing your sibilants? It took me ages and ages to figure that one out.”

“I must be reaping the benefits of your muscle memory,” Aziraphale decided, before he remembered something. “Oh! You’ll have to watch out for my leg.”

“What?” Crowley asked, frowning down at his lap.

“My leg,” Aziraphale repeated. “There’s a bit of an old war wound on my thigh, never healed quite right. It can seize up a bit when I go Upstairs- or back down here, for that matter- but generally it eases after a bit of walking.”

“Huh,” Crowley said. “I never would have guessed.”

“It doesn’t really bother me down here,” Aziraphale replied. “So there’s no reason you should have.”

They lapsed into silence again.

“I’ll find you,” Crowley promised, after a moment. “If you don’t show up, I’m coming right down to Hell and I’m not leaving without you.”

“As I’ll find a way back into Heaven if they don’t let you go,” Aziraphale replied. “_Wither thou goest, I will go_.” He had no intention of forgetting again.

He would never _have_ to forget again. Never have to bury his regard for Crowley for fear that it might become the munitions that killed him. Never have to catalog every stolen glance and touch even as he had to keep watch for the wrath of Heaven to come falling down upon them, or the wrath of Hell to claw them under.

They could just be together, in all the ways he’d dreamed of and then denied.

“Crowley,” he said slowly. “What- what do you expect will happen, when this works?”

“They’ll leave us alone,” Crowley told him firmly, as though to ward off any speculation as to otherwise.

“No, I mean- what do you expect to happen with us?”

It was the wrong thing to say- or at least the wrong way to say it. Crowley immediately dimmed. “No expectations,” he said quietly. “I don’t-”

“No, no, no, I- beloved,” Aziraphale said, nearly tripped over himself as he leaned forwards to take Crowley’s hand. “_Beloved._”

Crowley looked at him, eyes wide.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I’d like for us to go courting, once this is done. Once we’re free.”

“Courting?” Crowley repeated, and it was difficult to tell if he was more taken aback by the notion or the terminology.

“Yes. Courting. I’d like-” Aziraphale closed his eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by the thousands of years worth of accumulated fantasies playing out in his mind’s eye. “I’d like to woo you, properly. To spoil you as much as you’ve spoiled me these past several centuries.”

Crowley was staring at him again. The eyes might have been Aziraphale’s but, he decided, the unblinking quality of them was entirely Crowley’s own.

“What would that entail, exactly?” he asked, his voice gone a little hoarse.

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale told him. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“You must have some ideas,” Crowley said.

“Thousands at this point,” Aziraphale told him. “Hundreds of thousands. Possibly millions, I haven’t actually counted.”

Crowley smiled, like Aziraphale had already given him something precious. “Tell me some. I’ll let you know if anything doesn’t sound good.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, shifting closer to him. “I think I did promise that we could go on a picnic some day. I’m sure we could find some manner of suitable spot- a dark sky reserve, perhaps. Some place we could see the stars.”

Crowley gave his hand a little squeeze, and didn’t look away.

“I’d like to give you flowers. Not for growing- or, not only for growing. I still have- I’d kept the bouquet you gave me for the bookshop opening. I pressed the flowers, and I used a little angelic miracle to ensure that the colors didn’t fade and they didn’t crumble away into dust. It meant a lot to me. I want to give you something like that, too.”

Crowley gave his hand another squeeze, his eyes shining.

“I’d like to take you to a show- the theater, the opera. Oh, the cinema! We could go to the cinema now, and not have to worry about my having to duck behind the seats if one of your bosses showed up on the screen. We could sit together, side by side, and hold hands in the dark.”

Crowley swallowed heavily.

“We could go out to eat afterwards,” Aziraphale continued. “I’d like to take you someplace new, I think. Someplace we could make our own.”

“Is there somewhere in London worth eating we haven’t been to yet?” Crowley asked.

“Who says we have to stay in London?” Aziraphale asked. “We could make a holiday of it- I’d say we’re about due, wouldn’t you? We could go to Paris, or New Orleans, or Oaxaca or Osaka or Singapore or Monaco or Florence or Lagos or just about anywhere, really. Oh, I wonder if the ban on your entry to Ireland will stand since you’re no longer with Hell? There’s this little place in Donaghadee, Grace Neills, it’s been around since the early 1600s. Every time I’m in the area I stop in, and I can’t help but feel like you’d love the place- the lounge area in particular.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, with a soft, urgent tone. “How easy will it be to switch back, do you think?”

Aziraphale blinked a little at the sudden change in topic, but gamely replied with “Well, I don’t see that it would be any more difficult than switching in the first place. Quite possibly easier, since we know what to expect.”

“Can we just switch back for a minute, then?”

“Of course.” Aziraphale held out his hand, and after a few minutes’ effort, it was Crowley’s hand once more. “Is everything all right, my dear?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Yeah, I just didn’t want to say this in your body.” He took a deep breath, and then asked, tremulous: “Kiss me?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said again, and leaned over to slot his lips against Crowley’s.

They hadn’t done this before, not really. Not beyond little glancing pecks to the cheek in greeting when it was in style, not beyond the slightly more substantial peck Crowley had given him before going off to fetch them drinks. They hadn’t done this before, and it set off sparks throughout Aziraphale’s body, like one of them had been rubbing their socks against the carpeting.

Crowley’s lips were soft, and a little wet with the cognac they’d been drinking, and for a long moment he seemed to melt beneath his touch, pliant and content. Then Aziraphale pressed more firmly against him, tilting his head at a slightly different angle, and Crowley let out a broken noise and was suddenly much less passive. No longer beneath him, but straddling his lap, one arm wrapped around his back and fingers of his other hand sinking into Aziraphale’s hair. They kissed for an indeterminable while longer, and then Crowley’s mouth began to trail down his jaw and to his neck. Aziraphale sighed, and tilted his head away from the demon’s mouth to give him better access. He’d missed this. He wasn’t sure how, seeing as he’d never had this before, but he’d missed it still, with a keen ferocity he was just now becoming aware of.

“Oh Crowley,” he nearly moaned. “Oh Crowley, oh!”

Crowley pulled back slightly. “Okay there, angel?”

Aziraphale nearly laughed. He’d left ‘okay’ behind a while ago and was now somewhere in the realm of ‘spectacular’. “More than,” he managed. “Please, don’t stop.”

In reply, Crowley took him by the shoulders and pressed, until Aziraphale got the message and laid down, pulling Crowley on top of him, all of those lanky limbs settling upon him with ease, as though they had done this a hundred thousand times before. Aziraphale sighed as Crowley’s lips found their way to his neck once more. If they kept going like this, he was going to end up with a neck covered in lovebites.

He couldn’t say that he disliked the idea. Especially not when Crowley scraped the side of his neck with ever-so-careful _teeth_, sending a surge of arousal through him, beating a heavy pulse between his legs.

“Any, ah. Any requests?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley pulled back a bit, frowning. “Is there something wrong with what we’re doing now?” he asked.

“Oh no, not at all,” Aziraphale assured him. “I was only- I mean. I don’t currently have anything on.”

Crowley blink down at him.

“My Effort,” Aziraphale said, giving up all pretense of delicacy. “I’m not currently making one. Would you prefer me to have a penis or a vagina?”

“You don’t just- kind of, I don’t know, make one up as you go along?” Crowley asked.

“No,” Aziraphale said. “I tried that once, back when I was all rather new to this. It came out a sort of mass of nerve ending and mucus- I do believe I frightened the poor dear half to death with that.”

Crowley lowered his head down to Aziraphale’s chest and laughed.

“In my defense,” he protested, speaking loudly to be heard over the demon’s giggling. “This was a very long time ago. Humanity hadn’t really gotten their heads around gender as a concept, much less linked it to anatomy. They were still dividing themselves up with a moiety system, as being either from the line of Seth or the line of Cain. So, when you think about it, there really shouldn't have been an expectations one way or the other and being sort of in-between shouldn't have been terribly shocking.”

“Ooh, that’s an _antediluvian_ sex horror story,” Crowley said, still laughing. “Just- slip into whatever is most comfortable for you, angel. I’m a snake, I’m flexible.”

Aziraphale ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, and focused. He hadn’t done this in a while…

...he hadn’t done this in twenty-nine years, come to think of it. He had felt no need for sex, and therefore had had no need for an Effort, and he hadn’t really questioned why that urge had suddenly gone after having been there for more or less the entirety of his existence.

“Still alright there, angel?” Crowley asked, the expression on his face unbearably patient and kind.

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied. “I love you.”

Crowley nodded, and shivered a little. “That doesn’t mean we have to do anything,” he pointed out.

“It does rather come with the fact that I want to do a great many things with you,” Aziraphale snapped, frustrated with himself.

He’d been doing well, hadn’t he? He hadn’t been dwelling on- on _things_, hadn’t been hindered by them. Why couldn’t he just have kept that up, instead of laying here with a half-formed cock in danger of permanently ruining the mood?

“I know you want to,” Crowley soothed. “I- I can feel it, remember? How much you want this. I can feel it, just like you can feel how much I love you.”

I was the first time Crowley had said the words. _I love you._ It should have been redundant, after so long of being able to feel it in all the varying capacities Crowley had felt it over the centuries. _I love you._ It wasn’t.

It was a surging full-moon tide over a wide expanse of beach, it was a lit match being thrown into a barrel of kerosene, it was the first full meal after a fast was broken. It was, above all else, like catching the end of a rope when you had been washed overboard. He clung to Crowley’s love like he’d never allowed himself to cling to it before, and let it overwhelm him.

“I love you,” Crowley said again. His mouth curved into a wicked smile. He began to pepper Aziraphale’s face with kisses: his forehead, his cheeks, his jaw, even the tip of his nose. “I love you,” he said, betwixt each one. “I love you.”

Aziraphale managed to focus just enough to ensure that his Effort would function as it ought to, and then he gave himself over to the demon, pulling him down for a proper kiss.

This was nothing like that terrible Before, done at Innahon’s insistence, with his attendent’s spears pointed at their throats and their instructions hissed in his ears. Crowley wasn’t merely unbound and ungagged, but active and vocal, one hand still entwined in Aziraphale’s hair even as the other ran down along his side to begin to work its way under his shirt. This wasn’t Crowley _enduring_, but Crowley _offering_, Crowley _giving_. He could accept that gift and let himself enjoy this.

They kissed for an indeterminable length of time, neither one of them wishing to stop. Crowley shifted atop him, and every so often Aziraphale would grind up against him, helpless but to chase some form of relief even as he never wanted the moment to end. Crowley murmured against his lips every time they parted: _I love you, I love you._

“I love you,” Aziraphale managed to gasp at some point, and then when Crowley next dived down for a kiss he felt his tongue, thinner and longer than it had been previously, flicker in his mouth.

_Oh. So that’s what that feels like,_ Aziraphale thought, delighted. He’d always wondered.

Crowley pulled back, his face burning. “Ssssorry. I know that’sss too much.”

“No need to apologize, my dearest,” Aziraphale told him. “I don’t mind. Quite the opposite really.”

If anything,Crowley’s face burned hotter. “Mqrk?”

“I’ve known you for over six thousand years, Crowley. I’ve seen your tongue before,” Aziraphale pointed out gently.

“Nrjgk,” Crowley groaned, burying his face in Aziraphale’s chest once more.

“Too much for you?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yeah. I think- I think it might be,” Crowley said, his voice muffled against Aziraphale’s shirtfront.

“That’s quite all right, my dear. We don’t have to go any farther if you don’t want to.”

Crowley lifted his head. “Not on your life,” he said, which might have been the most sacred vow he could make. When he kissed Aziraphale next, his tongue was still forked, but it was forked in the way the heavily tattooed and pierced subset of Aziraphale’s neighbors sometimes had their tongues forked, a split down the middle from the tip down about an inch or so. Good for entertaining small children, terrible for getting things stuck in your teeth unstuck, or so he’d been informed.

He could say now, with some certainty, that it was also a very good tongue for being kissed with.

Crowley’s hands were moving with purpose now, trying to pull his shirt free of his trousers, trying to pull his trousers down from around his hips, and finding himself stymied by Aziraphale’s braces.

Crowley growled in frustration. “Just how angry will you be if I rip these off of you?”

“_Extremely!_” Aziraphale hissed, half sitting up. “Crowley, these are the only clothes I own right now.”

Crowley blinked at that. “Huh. Well, we’ll have to fix that sooner rather than later. Can’t have you wearing the same outfit to all those swanky shows you’re going to bring me to.”

“Does that mean you agree?” Aziraphale asked before he could quite stop himself. “That I can court you?”

Crowley, who had been taking advantage of their new position to remove Aziraphale’s jacket, paused. Aziraphale blushed, but didn’t take the question back. Much like _I love you_ he was pretty sure that he already knew Crowley’s opinion of the matter, but he still wanted to hear it.

“On one condition: don’t call it courting out in public,” Crowley said with a devastatingly handsome smirk. “_Dating_ angel, it’s called dating. And we’ll do that until they come up with a new word for it, and then we’ll do that until there’s another new word, and we’ll just keep doing it, and calling it something different as new words come up. Sound good?”

“It sounds like a date,” Aziraphale said, smiling. Some part of him wondered how difficult it would be to bring back the term ‘courting’ but that could wait.

“Yeah, it is,” Crowley said. Then he snapped, and the buttons of Aziraphale’s shirt and waistcoat popped open, and his braces and bowtie came undone.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale admonished.

“Yeah, I’ll make a big deal out of unwrapping you later, right now I can barely think straight,” Crowley explained, his voice slightly muffled by the shirt he was busy yanking over his head.

“Well then,” Aziraphale said. He reached forwards and stroked along the front of Crowley’s fly, causing the demon to bless ferociously, hips snapping forwards into his touch. “May I?” he asked. He scarcely dared to look directly up at him: Crowley was a vision and a work of art even at a glance, and Aziraphale felt he could very easily get lost if he let himself. He didn’t want to be lost in Crowley- he wanted to make Crowley feel good.

“_Please,_” Crowley begged, and Aziraphale didn’t plan on denying him any longer. He fumbled his fly open and reached inside, his fingers wrapping around his length, hard and more than a little wet, enough to stick the inside of his underthings to his cock.

“Fuck,” Crowley groaned, hips snapping again even as he grabbed Aziraphale roughly by the shoulders and pulled him close. Aziraphale hadn’t been wearing a vest, so the contact was all glorious skin on skin. They kissed, open-mouthed and artless, half panting into one another’s mouths. Crowley pushed himself even closer, grinding down against Aziraphale’s cock, and he was suddenly very aware that he was not liable to last very long at all.

“Crowley,” he gasped. “Crowley, I’m-” But then Crowley began to kiss along his neck, still grinding down on his cock through his trousers, and ‘not very long at all’ turned out to be ‘until right this very moment’.

The one saving grace in the matter was that before Aziraphale could quite gather his wits Crowley was panting in his ear “Fuck, Aziraphale, _Aziraphale_-” and suddenly the hand Aziraphale had on in Crowley’s underthings was as sticky as the the inside of his own trousers.

They sat there for a moment, breathing heavily. Aziraphale’s face was burning, and he could feel Crowley’s doing the same where it was nested against his shoulder.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, because clearly one of them was going to have to say something, lest they simply sit here in mutual embarrassment until their respective sides came to arrest them. “I am sorry, I normally have better stamina than that.”

Crowley let out a sound that was clearly trying to be a giggle, but it sounded too anxious and oddly relieved.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said, alarmed. He tried to pull back a bit so he could see Crowley’s face, but Crowley followed him, stubbornly hiding his face. “Crowley, darling, what-”

“It lasted almost a whole year, you know?” Crowley said. “Your whole no-nightmare blessing. It lasted almost an entire year.”

Aziraphale didn’t know where Crowley was going with this, much less what to say about it. He stayed silent.

“Your blessings always do that, did you know? They linger. You gave me a little good luck blessing after I lose a coin toss once and over the course of the next month Hell has given me six different commendations for things I never had to look in the face, the local tavern came across a barrel of my favorite whiskey and I got to pull off some kind of mass havoc outside Parliament involving carrying pigeons and peanut butter without anyone saying boo about it. I used to think I was doing it, somehow. Like all that wishful thinking was just making bits of you stick to me.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, trying to hold him more closely, and letting his arms drop when Crowley began to squirm away. Crowley stilled then, and remained leaning against Aziraphale.

“So I had almost a year of no nightmares, and then the blessing started wearing off. And it wasn’t- it always started out good, the dreams, they started out- and then we’d get to here, and I’d realize that you were- were bleeding and crying and we were surrounded and-”

“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale said, horrified. “Oh, my poor darling, I’m so sorry.” His hands hovered behind Crowley, unsure of their welcome until Crowley reached behind him and pulled one by the wrist to rest in his hair.

“Don’t. Don’t apologize,” Crowley said. “Best sleep of my life, during the year before that.”

Aziraphale risked wrapping an arm around his shoulders to hold him close, and this time Crowley melted against him, his arms wrapping around Aziraphale in turn. For a long moment, they merely held one another.

“So, the takeaway from this is that I might freak out after sex, just a little,” Crowley said eventually.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Aziraphale assured him. “And we truly don’t have to do this again, should you not wish to risk it.”

Crowley made a protesting noise in his throat.

“And, to be perfectly frank, I can’t promise that I won’t ‘freak out’ as you put it,” Aziraphale continued. “Especially should we decide to, well, to do- to-”

“To do some of the things they forced you to do to me,” Crowley finished for him.

“Yes. Precisely that, yes.” As explicit and even creative as they’d gotten with their demands towards the end, none of them had thought of frottage, much less half-clothed frottage on the couch. It had all been focused on penetration of one kind or another, with Innahon and his attendants. “I’ve loved you for- Good Lord, I don’t even know how long I’ve loved you. Centuries. Millennia.” He shook his head, as though to jar the memory loose, and was disappointed but not surprised when it didn’t work. “It’s in there somewhere, I’m sure. But- I can be patient. Of course I can be patient, my love. There’s no rush, and there’s no mandate that we get things right the very first time we try it- or the second, or the fifteenth, for that matter.”

“We’ll be patient with one another,” Crowley agreed. “And, maybe, next time we work up to this, we’ll last more than about five minutes.”

Aziraphale laughed. “Yes. Yes, that would be nice, I think.”

At long last Crowley lifted his head, and met Aziraphale’s gaze. “Yeah. We’ll build up to that. For now, let’s clean up a bit. Can’t have you ruining your one pair of trousers now, can we?”

“Especially since you’ll be wearing them in a moment,” Aziraphale agreed. He leaned back, though before he could do anything about the mess currently rendering his trousers decidedly less comfortable than usual, Crowley waved a hand over the and disappeared it.

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale said.

“And now you don’t have to constantly think about it being there,” Crowley replied.

He wouldn’t have to, but with the frisson of demonic energy left by the miracle he would always remember that Crowley cared enough to set him to rights.

Before he could return the favor, Crowley rolled his head and neck to the right, and he was suddenly clean and briefly, gloriously naked, and then he rolled his head and neck to the left and was once more fully clothed. He waited patiently while Aziraphale redid his buttons, braces, and bowtie manually, and then held out his hand.

“Think it’ll be easier the third time?” he asked.

“There’s one way to find out,” Aziraphale said.

They joined hands, and became one another once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a small, self-indulgent epilogue which I will post probably tomorrow when I have the chance.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short and self-indulgent and mostly about Aziraphale's unremembering problem.

Aziraphale paid for their lunch-turned-dinner at the Ritz, taking the check from the waiter with the sort of polite, implacable insistence that he generally only turned on officers of the law as Crowley sat there and very politely held in his laughter until the poor flummoxed waiter had left with the sizable tip that Aziraphale had also supplied.  
  
“Are we starting out early with the dating thing?” he asked.  
  
“I thoroughly intend to spoil you rotten from here on in, I’ll have you know,” Aziraphale replied. “Shall we head back to my place? Perhaps enjoy a bit of a nightcap?”  
  
“Sounds great, angel. Just one thing…” Crowley then proceeded to flag down another waiter and persuade them to give him a bottle.  
  
Aziraphale looked at him, nonplussed.  
  
“Just in case Adam’s turned your wine cellar into grape juice and soft drinks,” Crowley explained.  
  
“Oh, well, that would be disappointing,” Aziraphale admitted.  
  
Crowley paid for the bottle and they took off, arm in arm. It wasn’t far to the bookshop, and the weather was lovely.  
  
It was still standing. Aziraphale had never seen it otherwise, but it was good to have confirmation nonetheless.  
  
“Shall I get me behind thee?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Oh hush, none of that now,” Aziraphale said. He gave his hand a squeeze, and stood on tiptoe a moment to press a kiss onto Crowley’s cheek. Crowley went a bit pink, and stepped into the bookshop once Aziraphale had unlocked the doors.  
  
“So I guess we should check on the wine cellar,” Crowley said, as Aziraphale went to turn on the lights.  
  
“Yes, I suppose we should,” Aziraphale agreed. “And then, well.” He took a deep breath. He’d rehearsed this bit, if only in his head. He could say it aloud. He could.  
  
“Well?” Crowley prompted softly.  
  
“Well, if you’re amenable, I was wondering if you’d perhaps care to spend the night,” Aziraphale said. “It doesn’t- we don’t have to do anything, mind. But I have a bed, and it’s a comfortable enough spot to read, so I don’t think you would have any trouble sleeping there. We could cuddle a bit, if you’d like. Perhaps we could even kiss.”  
  
He turned around, and found Crowley smiling at him, his glasses folded up and hung from his collar.  
  
“Why Aziraphale Ziraphale Fell,” he said, startling a laugh from Aziraphale. “Are you inviting me to a sleepover so we can neck like a couple of teenagers?”  
  
“I wouldn’t say no,” Aziraphale replied, sounding more than a little breathless even to his own ears.  
  
Crowley put down the bottle he’d been carrying on a nearby shelf, which obligingly grew an extra four inches or so in order to have space for it, and walked over to him. He took Aziraphale’s face within his hands and Aziraphale threw his arms around his shoulders, and they kissed.  
  
“We should probably check and see if Adam reconstituted your bed,” Crowley said when they could bear to pulled away. “I didn’t actually make it upstairs. It’s upstairs, right?”  
  
“Yes, yes it is. Or it should be, at least,” Aziraphale said. “I um, shall we?”  
  
“Yeah, let’s.”  
  
But he didn’t move until Aziraphale took him by the hand and pulled him along, deeper into the shop, and then into the sitting room. He turned the lights on with a thought, and then he froze.  
  
“That- that wasn’t there before,” Crowley protested, sounding spooked.  
  
With good reason to. _That_ referred to his old wingback chair, which should definitely not have been here. He’d given it to Shireen, and Shireen had moved out to Croydon a few years later, so even if she still had it, it shouldn’t be here.  
  
“Fuck. Shit,” Crowley swore. “Aziraphale, are you-”  
  
“I’m fine,” Aziraphale said, distantly aware that he sounded very much not fine. “I’m fine, I’ve already remembered, it’s-” He tore his eyes away from the chair and froze once more as they alighted on something else.  
  
“But that’s my vase!” Crowley cried as he followed Aziraphale’s gaze, because it was: a lavishly decorated red and black Alhambra, standing comfortably between their heights. “That’s my vase, and it broke, what is it doing-”  
  
“I broke it,” Aziraphale said numbly.  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“I broke it,” Aziraphale repeated. “So I could forget.”  
  
That had been during the Spanish Inquisition, of course, right at the start. He’d come to fetch Crowley ahead of Heaven’s own investigative forces, and found him drinking heavily, and not in celebration either.  
  
“Do you have any idea what they’re doing, Aziraphale?” Crowley had said before he had even managed to greet him properly. “Did you know?”  
  
He’d gotten the details from Heaven, or so he’d thought. As it happened, they’d been rather lacking.  
  
Aziraphale had gotten Crowley home, and helped him sober up, bit by bit. And then they’d gotten drunk again together, because, not to put too fine a point on it, but the Spanish Inquisition was not the sort of thing one could process sober.  
  
“Like with the chair?” Crowley asked in the here and now.  
  
Aziraphale nodded. “I got you to sleep, eventually. I tucked you up in bed and I decided that I would tell you- tell you everything in the morning, tell you that I love you, and then the Archangel Gabriel walked right up to your front door and knocked.”  
  
“Oh,” Crowley said.  
  
“I made some kind of excuse. I- I told him that you had gone already, and that I was investigating your home for clues as to where you might have gone, and eventually he left, but you just upstairs and asleep and _defenseless_ and. It had been less than a day. We’d been under the same roof for less than a day and I nearly got you killed.”  
  
“You didn’t,” Crowley said. “You wouldn’t, it wouldn’t have been your fault. And that’s how you knew they were sending that Asiel wanker down, right?”  
  
“Yes, yes. Gabriel told me that they were sending zir to watch over the area, in case you returned.” The archangel Asiel was notably trigger happy being- literally, ze had a particular and abiding fondness for the arquebus. A confrontation with zir would not have ended well and would have been decidedly difficult to hide from Heaven to boot. “Ze ended up following the Inquisition around wherever it’s influence gained prevalence, and were eventually recalled after the Inquisition officially closed down.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I knew that bit,” Crowley said.  
  
“So I broke the vase, so you wouldn’t bring it with you and I could forget, and I woke you up, and we fled into the night and we parted at the border and you were safe,” Aziraphale finished. “Safe as you could be, at least.”  
  
“Oh angel,” Crowley said. He tugged Aziraphale in closer, tucking him up against his chest and pressing kisses into his hair.  
  
There were other objects in the room that he had quite purposefully lost and forgotten. He noted their presence numbly, not daring to look at them with anything other than the corners of his eyes: the bit of carved jade from the fall of the Ming Dynasty, a miniature painting from his time in the Mughal Empire, even a khopesh from his days serving as a guard for King Solomon. It hung over the mantle, as though in answer to his decades-old lament about not keeping any swords around.  
  
After a few moments, Aziraphale pulled himself away and into the kitchen, feeling almost as though he were floating. Crowley, who still had him by the hand, followed. There were other mementos reconstituted here: he caught sight of his hatchet from his days with the Essenes leaning by the door, and the glint of vermeil from Versailles inside one of the china cabinets, but he didn’t dare to linger, not on the items, and not in the kitchen either. He walked up the stairs, lights turning on with a thought, still tugging Crowley along behind him.  
  
He walked into his bedroom. For a moment, he thought it was untouched, and then he caught sight of a small figurine on the pillow. He picked it up.  
  
“I recognize that one too,” Crowley said. “That’s from the Ark. One of my kids made that.”  
  
He’d forgotten that- or not remembered it, rather. How Crowley had very quickly come to refer to the children he’d smuggled onto the Ark as his own.  
  
“I don’t- why would Adam do this? And how? And why wasn’t this in the shop before? And-”  
  
Aziraphale burst into tears.

Crowley wrapped his arms around him, pulling them both down onto the bed when that proved ineffective at stopping them. “What? What is it, what did you-”  
  
“I remembered,” Aziraphale managed to say. “I remember, now. When I first fell in love with you.”  
  
Looking back on it now, he could see that even unremembered, the fear had begun to fade as the centuries had gone by, tempered by resignation and weariness. But this first time? It had been pure terror that had followed his realization that _maybe he really is a lovely person, maybe his feelings really are true, maybe we could..._, and pure terror that had made him devise his method of unremembering. He’d taken this, this little bit of cycad carved into something resembling a dove, and he’d poured all that love and as many memories of fondness and fear as he could into it, and then he'd thrown it into the floodwaters. By all rights, it should have been buried under several layers of silt in Armenia right now.  
  
“That long ago?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale confirmed, tears streaming down his face. “Yes, it was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Asiel Timor Dei](https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/colonial-americas/a/master-of-calamarca-angel-with-arquebus)
> 
> I feel really weird about having finished this fic, but also really good about having finished this fic. I hope you got at least half as much out of reading it as I did out of writing it.

**Author's Note:**

> The third part is already on the kink meme: https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=556904#cmt556904


End file.
